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RETICENCE  IN    LITERATURE 


RETICENCE   IN 
LITERATURE 

And  Other  Papers 


By 
ARTHUR   WAUGH 


New  York 
E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 

68 1  Fifth  Avenue 
1915 


Printed  ky 
Tht   Wtstmintttr  Press,  London,   W. 


I  OWE  thanks  to  various  editors  and  publishers 
for  kind  permission  to  reprint  the  contents  of 
this  volume.  "Reticence  in  Literature"  appeared 
in  "  The  Yellow  Book"  and  is  reprinted  by  per- 
mission of  Mr.  John  Lane.  The  paper  on  George 
Herbert  was  written  as  an  introduction  to  Herbert's 
Poems  in  "  The  World's  Classics  "and"  Standard 
Authors"  and  reappears  by  leave  of  Mr.  Humphrey 
Milford.  The  article  on  George  Gissing  is  reprinted 
by  permission  of  the  editor  of  "  The  Fortnightly 
Review  "  ;  and  the  other  papers  in  the  book  owe 
the  same  courtesy  to  the  editors  and  proprietors  of 
"  The  Academy"  with  which  "  Literature  "  (their 
first  home)  is  now  incorporated,  and  of  "  The  Daily 
Chronicle"  One  or  two  essays,  which  were  clearly 
"  dated  "  by  their  subject  and  occasion,  I  have  left 
as  they  originally  appeared.  Others  have  undergone 
some  revision,  in  view  of  their  relation  to  the  rest  of 
the  book,  or  to  later  changes  in  the  author's  judg- 
ment. The  "  Sketches  for  Portraits  "  have  been 
selected  from  a  quantity  of  similar  material,  as 
illustrating  in  succession  various  familiar  phases  of 
the  literary  life.  Few  careers  make  a  more  arduous 
demand  upon  the  character  ;  for  few  are  subject  to 
such  sudden  vacillations  of  success  and  failure,  of 
ambition  and  disappointment.  It  is  hoped  that  these 
"  partial  portraits  "  may  serve  to  suggest,  not  only 
their  separate  varieties  of  the  literary  temperament, 
but  also  that  sustaining  brotherhood  of  hope  and 
endurance,  which  unites  all  those  who  strive  to  rule 
their  life  by  ideas  rather  than  by  acquisitions. 


To 
ALEC  RABAN  WAUGH 

My  Dear  Boy  : 

In  days  before  you  were  born,  and  in  the 
years  immediately  following,  when  you  were  as  yet 
too  young  to  care  about  the  paternal  "  paper  and 
print"  your  Mother  and  I  kept  a  scrap-book,  in 
which  she  used  to  paste  my  contributions  to  the  fugi- 
tive press.  We  had  less  to  think  about  then,  and  the 
collection  of  these  stray  papers  amused  us  ;  but  by  the 
time  when  you  began  to  act  "  Hamlet  "  and  "  Julius 
Ccesar  "  in  the  nursery,  we  found  the  interest  in 
your  activities  much  more  absorbing  than  my  own. 
So  the  scrap-book  languished,  though  it  still  sur- 
vived in  oblivion  ;  and  you  will  not,  perhaps,  have 
forgotten  that  one  evening  last  holidays,  when  you 
were  hunting  in  the  book-room  for  a  lost  number  of 
"  Wisden's  Almanack,"  you  suddenly  came  across 
the  old  faded  pages,  full  of  your  father's  columns 
and  half-columns,  and  (to  their  author's  extreme  sur- 
prise) went  on  reading  in  them  till  long  after  your 
usual  bed-time.  And  you  finished  your  evening's 
holiday-task  by  asking  whether  some  of  the  stuff  was 
not  worth  collecting  into  a  book  for  others  to  re-read 
beside  yourself.  Frankly,  I  did  not  think  the  ex- 
periment worth  while  then  ;  and  I  am  afraid  I 
cannot  persuade  myself  that  it  has  proved  so  now. 
But  in  the  meanwhile  another  friend  has  come  along, 
with  business  opportunities,  who  is  rash  enough  to 
share  your  filial  confidence  ;  and  here,  in  short,  is  a 
little  volume,  gathered  out  of  the  contents  of  the  old 
vii 


scrap-book  -which  your  Mother  and  I  began  to  make 
before  you  were  here  to  absorb  so  much  of  our  life 
and  our  ambition.  Will  you  accept  it  with  my  love, 
since  your  imagination  was  the  first  to  see  the  book 
as  a  faint  possibility  ? 

Alas  !  I  am  afraid  that  your  suggestion  has  only 
added  one  more  to  the  books  which  all  the  world 
could  do  without.  Even  for  yourself,  I  doubt  if  its 
use  will  extend  beyond  the  provision  of  a  few  phrases 
(which  you  are  very  much  at  liberty  to  steal,  and  I 
am  sure  no  master  will  detect  the  theft)  to  serve  as 
padding  for  your  school  essays.  And  yet  I  should 
like  to  think  that  a  word  here  and  there  may  recall 
to  your  memory  some  of  those  golden  hours  we  have 
spent,  trudging  together  over  Hampstead  Heath  or 
along  Sherborne  slopes,  talking  one  against  the  other 
of  poetry,  drama,  cricket,  football,  and  whatever 
other  joys  have  made  our  life  so  pleasant  and  our 
companionship  so  sweet.  The  Sherborne  days  are 
drawing  to  a  close  now  ;  and  sometimes  I  know  only 
too  well  that,  as  we  go  talking  over  old  delights,  your 
thoughts  are  wandering  off  to  new  fields,  where  can- 
non roar  among  the  woods  of  France,  and  where  you 
are  already  so  eager,  as  you  always  were,  to  be  up 
and  playing  your  part.  There  I  can  follow  you  only 
in  thought  and  hope  and  trust.  But  whatever  lies 
ahead  of  us,  the  past  will  always  remain  our  own. 
"  The  gods  themselves  cannot  recall  their  gifts  "  ; 
and  among  the  best  gifts  which  life  has  brought  me 
have  been  the  comradeship,  the  sympathy,  and  the 
unclouded  devotion,  which  you  have  given  with  such 
full  hands  to  your  equally  devoted  Father, 

ARTHUR  WAUGH 
New  Year,  1915. 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION  xi 

VIEWS  AND  IMPRESSIONS 

RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE  3 

THE  ABUSE  OF  THE  SUPERLATIVE  25 
SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

I.  The  Period  and  the  Field  33 
II.  The  Poetry  of  Faith  and  Aspiration    40 

III.  The  Poetry  of  Reflection  and  Doubt  50 

IV.  The  Poetry  of  Emotion  61 
V.  The  Poetry  of  Reaction  71 

VI.  Retrospect  and  Prospect  80 

FICTION  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  93 

THE  PARTICULAR  COPY  103 

THE  MOOD  AND  THE  BOOK  109 

CONCERNING  ANTHOLOGIES  115 

SKETCHES  FOR  PORTRAITS 

RICHARD  CRASHAW  125 

GEORGE  HERBERT  130 

CHARLES  KINGSLEY  144 

CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI  149 

ROBERT  BUCHANAN  154 

GEORGE  GISSING  161 

GEORGE  BIRKBECK  HILL  183 

TWO  HOMES 

(1)  THE  CITY  OF  BATH  191 

(2)  AN  ENGLISHMAN'S  CASTLE  198 
INDEX  OF  NAMES  205 

ix 


INTRODUCTION 

IN  a  collection  of  papers,  covering  twenty- 
five  years  of  journalistic  "  dust  and  desk- 
work,"  it  would  be  vain,  perhaps,  to  expect 
much  unity  of  purpose  ;  but  their  author  may  be 
permitted  his  own  regret  that  work,  which  has 
entailed  so  many  hours  of  penmanship,  should 
fail  to  display  a  greater  sense  of  progress,  or  a 
more  confident  air  of  achievement.  It  is  not  un- 
likely, however,  that  most  men,  who  are  on  the 
verge  of  their  fiftieth  year,  would  have  to  confess 
already,  in  looking  back,  that  they  set  out  upon 
their  journey  with  many  bright  expectations  which 
were  never  destined  to  be  realised.  And  this  must 
be  particularly  true  of  the  journalist,  who  is  apt 
to  begin  life  with  the  spirit  of  a  crusade  in  his 
heart,  ready  to  tilt  at  every  windmill,  and  to  seize 
upon  any  "  impossible  loyalty  "  that  offers  itself 
as  his  adopted  cause.  The  heart  of  youth  beats 
high  ;  the  white  road  beckons  to  adventure  ;  a 
dragon  lurks  behind  every  hill.  It  is  only  as  the 
twilight  settles  down  in  earnest  that  we  realise 
how  many  of  our  suspected  foemen  were  only 
shadows  after  all. 

The  young  writer,  however,  soon  gives  up 
struggling  against  his  world,  and  learns  to  march 
in  time  with  its  monotonous  movement.  Editors, 
he  comes  to  understand,  are  not  in  the  least  in- 
terested in  personal  prejudices  ;  and  those  chival- 
rous journals  which  set  out  to  combat  abuses 
cease  very  shortly  to  appear  at  all.  For  the  world 
expects  its  prophets  to  prophesy  smooth  things, 
xi 


INTRODUCTION 


and  by  very  stress  of  necessity  the  task  of  current 
criticism  begins  to  fade,  in  a  year  or  two,  into  the 
kindlier  tribute  of  appreciation.  The  result,  per- 
haps, is  not  stimulating  to  progress,  but  it  is 
unquestionably  mellowing  to  the  temperament. 
And  the  truth  remains,  that  in  the  long  run  we 
learn  more  from  what  we  love  than  from  what 
we  dislike. 

The  few  papers  in  this  little  volume  which 
evince  anything  of  a  combative  disposition  were 
written  when  the  writer  was  very  new  to  his 
business  ;  and,  if  they  have  any  quality  at  all,  it 
is  chiefly  the  youthful  quality  of  freshness  or  of 
enthusiasm.  The  new  movement  in  literature  is 
always  challenged,  and  the  challenge  does  not 
invariably  come  from  the  middle-aged  and  hide- 
bound. Youth  is  naturally  much  more  intolerant 
than  maturity.  But  by  the  time  that  a  man  has 
learnt  to  disregard  the  books  with  which  he  is  out 
of  sympathy,  and  to  concentrate  upon  those  which 
he  can  understand  and  appreciate,  he  ought  to  be 
able  to  strike  some  faint  fire  of  companionship 
out  of  that  rare  reader  who  shares  his  own  affec- 
tions, and  who  possesses  also  the  true  bookman's 
patience,  which  can  bear  to  listen  to  another's 
praise  of  things  which  he  himself,  perhaps,  may 
be  conscious  of  being  able  to  praise  to  much 
better  purpose.  For  such  indulgent  readers,  if 
they  are  to  be  found,  these  gleanings  of  twenty- 
five  years,  spent  almost  entirely  among  books, 
have  been  collected  from  the  old  scrap-book 
described  in  the  dedication.  They  speak  very 
likely  in  phrases  familiar  and  even  conventional ; 
but  at  any  rate  they  speak  from  the  heart. 

And  such  consistency  as  they  may  claim  is 
xii 


INTRODUCTION 


based  upon  one  sincere  and  deep  conviction. 
Literature,  I  believe,  should  strive  not  so  much 
to  describe  life  as  to  interpret  it ;  and  all  Life, 
interpreted  truly,  is  filled  with 

"  Undreamt-of  possibilities 
In  most  unhopeful  pictures." 

I  remember  H.  D.  Traill  saying  once  that,  as  he 
walked  down  any  squalid  suburban  street,  he 
could  picture  behind  the  soiled  window-curtains 
a  series  of  domestic  tragedies  as  poignant  and 
hopeless  as  any  that  have  ever  held  the  stage. 
Now,  that  was  a  description  of  life  which  repre- 
sents a  large  angle  of  modern  literary  expression  ; 
but  I  very  much  doubt  whether  it  is  a  true  inter- 
pretation of  life, — even  of  the  sort  of  life  that  is 
lived  in  Peckham  or  in  Kentish  Town.  The  critic 
who  sees  squalor  and  misery  in  every  grade  of 
life,  material  or  spiritual,  that  lies  immediately 
below  his  own,  falls  inevitably  short  of  revelation, 
because  he  is  simply  imputing  to  the  world  him- 
self and  his  own  impressions,  instead  of  interpre- 
ting the  real  world  and  the  true  impressions  which 
animate  these  apparently  melancholy  surround- 
ings. For  the  melancholy  is  merely  relative, — 
the  contribution  in  fact  of  the  spectator, — and 
the  truly  creative  interpreter  knows  that  behind 
every  one  of  those  smug  bay-windows  hope  is 
perpetually  springing  anew,  romance  is  con- 
tinually blossoming,  the  indomitable  heart  of  man 
is  making  for  itself  an  eternal  paradise  out  of  a 
dingy  back-parlour.  The  native  imagination, 
which  enables  a  child  to  see  the  features  of  the 
London  express  in  a  match-box  mounted  upon 
two  cotton-reels,  still  survives  through  manhood, 
xiii 


INTRODUCTION 


making  plain  the  rough  places  of  life,  penetrating 
its  darkness  with  light ;  and  for  the  fostering  of 
that  magic  fancy  Literature  is  the  only  certain 
amulet.  The  first  quality  of  literature,  therefore, 
is  to  be  fresh,  and  fragrant,  and  illuminating,  and 
all  the  literature  that  has  outlived  its  own  day  will 
be  found  to  possess  that  saving  grace.  It  is  a  grace, 
moreover,  which  grows  with  years,  revealing  it- 
self more  and  more,  like  some  lovely  and  loveable 
character,  under  the  influence  of  familiarity. 

Further,  what  is  fragrant,  fresh,  and  illumin- 
ating, will,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  be  also 
urbane  ;  and  it  is  here  that  at  the  present  time 
literature  is  faced  by  its  sternest  difficulty.  Urban- 
ity, of  course,  is  a  characteristic  of  the  few,  and 
during  the  last  twenty  years  the  prevailing  tend- 
ency of  education  and  of  politics  has  driven 
steadily  towards  the  universal  democratisation 
of  letters.  More  and  more  space  is  given  to  books 
in  popular  newspapers,  with  the  result  that  the 
test  of  literary  excellence  has  begun  to  be  confused 
with  the  test  of  popularity.  What  is  loud,  emphatic, 
self-assertive  is  bound,  under  such  a  system,  to 
be  invested  with  a  value  to  which  it  has  no  sort  of 
legitimate  claim  ;  and  even  eccentricity  (one  of 
the  worst  of  literary  vices)  is  exalted  into  a  virtue, 
upon  the  barren  excuse  that  it  takes  the  public 
eye.  But  the  true  test  of  literature  lies  at  the  other 
extreme.  Exaggeration,  violence,  vulgarity  are  its 
deadliest  banes ;  reticence,  modesty,  and  shy 
beauty  are  its  infallible  qualities.  These  are  not 
the  qualities,  perhaps,  that  attract  attention  under 
the  garish  lights  of  the  modern  stage  of  journal- 
ism, but  they  are  the  only  qualities  that  will 
stand  the  wearing  test  of  daily  life  and  spiritual 
xiv 


INTRODUCTION 


companionship.  For  these  are  the  qualities  which 
spread  peace  and  beauty  in  a  home  ;  and  the  true 
function  of  literature  is  to  make  for  every  man  a 
home  of  the  soul,  a  citadel  of  the  mind,  where  he 
may  find  protection  against  the  assaults  of  time 
and  fortune,  and  a  sanctuary  amid  adversities.  As 
a  man  grows  older,  he  is  likely  to  find  that  such  a 
continuing  city  becomes  more  and  more  essential. 
For  friends  fall  off,  and  circumstances  change  ;  but 
a  good  book  is  always  a  good  book,  and  a  favourite 
passage  is  always  at  its  post.  The  man  who  lives 
among  the  right  books  is  free  for  ever  of  the 
highest  form  of  fellowship. 

And  since  there  are  few  pleasanter  hours  for 
the  book-lover  than  those  which  we  spend  in  the 
firelight,  among  the  books  we  love,  taking  down 
volume  after  volume,  reading  a  verse  here  and  a 
favourite  passage  there,  and  protesting  their 
charm  to  a  congenial  friend  in  the  opposite  chair  ; 
so,  perhaps,  some  faint  echo  of  such  enthusiasm 
may  linger  round  these  faded  causeries,  recalling 
the  ambrosial  hour  when  for  the  first  time  the 
eye  kindled,  and  the  heart  beat  quicker,  at  the 
call  of  some  inspired  phrase,  which  has  long  since 
woven  itself  into  the  fabric  of  our  life.  Books 
make  the  best  friends,  and  the  friendships  that 
grow  out  of  books  remain  the  most  enduring. 
For  even  a  harsh  word,  or  an  unkind  thought, 
can  be  smiled  away  in  the  light  of  a  cherished 
quotation. 


xv 


VIEWS  AND  IMPRESSIONS 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

HE  never  spoke  out.  Upon  these  four  words, 
gathered  by  chance  from  a  private  letter, 
Matthew  Arnold,  with  that  super-subtle 
ingenuity  which  loved  to  take  the  word  and  play 
upon  it  and  make  it  of  innumerable  colours,  has 
constructed,  as  one  may  conjecture  some  ante- 
diluvian wonder  from  its  smallest  fragment,  a 
full,  complete,  and  intimate  picture  of  the  poet 
Thomas  Gray.  He  never  spoke  out.  Here,  we  are 
told,  lies  the  secret  of  Gray's  limitation  as  much 
in  life  as  in  literature  :  so  sensitive  was  he  in 
private  life,  so  modest  in  public,  that  the  thoughts 
that  arose  in  him  never  got  full  utterance,  the 
possibilities  of  his  genius  were  never  fulfilled  ; 
and  we,  in  our  turn,  are  left  the  poorer  for  that 
nervous  delicacy  which  has  proved  the  bane  of 
the  poet,  living  and  dead  alike.  It  is  a  singularly 
characteristic  essay — this  paper  on  Gray,  show- 
ing the  writer's  logical  talent  at  once  in  its  strong- 
est and  its  weakest  capacities,  and  a  complete 
study  of  Arnold's  method  might  well,  I  think,  be 
founded  upon  its  thirty  pages.  But  in  the  present 
instance  I  have  recurred  to  that  recurring  phrase, 
He  never  spoke  out,  not  to  discuss  Matthew 
Arnold's  estimate  of  Gray,  nor,  indeed,  to  con- 
sider Gray's  relation  to  his  age  ;  but  merely  to 
point  out,  what  the  turn  of  Arnold's  argument 
did  not  require  him  to  consider,  namely,  the 
extraordinarily  un-English  aspect  of  this  reticence 
in  Gray,  a  reticence  alien  without  doubt  to  the 
English  character,  but  still  more  alien  to  English 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

literature.  Reticence  is  not  a  national  character- 
istic— far  otherwise.  The  phrase  "  national  char- 
acteristic "is,  I  know  well,  a  cant  phrase,  and,  as 
such,  full  of  the  dangers  of  abuse.  Historical  and 
ethnographical  criticism,  proceeding  on  popular 
lines,  has  tried  from  time  to  time  to  fix  certain 
tendencies  to  certain  races,  and  to  argue  from 
individuals  to  generalities  with  a  freedom  that 
every  law  of  induction  belies.  And  so  we  have 
come  to  endow  the  Frenchman,  universally  and 
without  exception,  with  politeness,  the  Indian, 
equally  universally,  with  cunning,  the  American 
with  the  commercial  talent,  the  German  with  the 
educational,  and  so  forth.  Generalisations  of  this 
kind  must,  of  course,  be  accepted  with  limitations. 
But  it  is  not  too  much,  perhaps,  to  say  that  the 
Englishman  has  always  prided  himself  upon  his 
frankness.  He  is  always  for  speaking  out ;  and  it 
is  this  faculty  of  outspokenness  that  he  is  anxious 
to  attribute  to  those  characters  which  he  sets  up 
in  the  market-places  of  his  religion  and  his  liter- 
ature, as  those  whom  he  chiefly  delights  to  honour. 
The  demigods  of  our  national  verse,  the  heroes 
of  our  national  fiction,  are  brow-bound,  above  all 
other  laurels,  with  this  glorious  freedom  of  free 
speech  and  open  manners,  and  we  have  come  to 
regard  this  broad,  untrammelled  virtue  of  ours, 
as  all  individual  virtues  will  be  regarded  with  the 
revolution  of  the  cycle  of  provinciality,  as  a  guer- 
don above  question  or  control.  We  have  become 
inclined  to  forget  that  every  good  thing  has,  as 
Aristotle  pointed  out  so  long  ago,  its  correspond- 
ing evil,  and  that  the  corruption  of  the  best  is 
always  worst  of  all.  Frankness  is  so  great  a  boon, 
we  say  :  we  can  forgive  anything  to  the  man  who 


THE  VIRTUE   OF   FRANKNESS 

has  the  courage  of  his  convictions,  the  fearlessness 
of  freedom — the  man,  in  a  word,  who  speaks  out. 

But  we  have  to  distinguish,  I  think,  at  the  out- 
set between  a  national  virtue  in  the  rough  and  the 
artificial  or  acquired  fashion  in  which  we  put  that 
virtue  into  use.  It  is  obvious  that,  though  many 
things  are  possible  to  us,  which  are  good  in  them- 
selves, many  things  are  inexpedient,  when  con- 
sidered relatively  to  our  environment.  Count 
Tolstoi  may  preach  his  gospel  of  non-resistance 
till  the  beauty  of  his  holiness  seems  almost  Christ- 
like  ;  but  every  man  who  goes  forth  to  his  work 
and  to  his  labour  knows  that  the  habitual  turning 
of  the  right  cheek  to  the  smiter  of  the  left,  the 
universal  gift  of  the  cloak  to  the  beggar  of  our 
coat,  is  subversive  of  all  political  economy,  and 
no  slight  incentive  to  immorality  as  well.  In  the 
same  way,  it  will  be  clear,  that  this  national  virtue 
of  ours,  this  wholesome,  sincere  outspokenness,  is 
only  possible  within  certain  limits,  set  by  custom 
and  expediency,  and  it  is  probably  a  fact  that 
there  was  never  a  truly  wise  man  yet  but  tem- 
pered his  natural  freedom  of  speech  by  an  ac- 
quired habit  of  reticence.  The  man  who  never 
speaks  out  may  be  morose  ;  the  man  who  is 
always  speaking  out  is  a  most  undesirable 
acquaintance. 

Now,  I  suppose  every  one  is  prepared  to  admit 
with  Matthew  Arnold  that  the  literature  of  an 
age  (we  are  not  now  speaking  of  poetry  alone,  be 
it  understood,  but  of  literature  as  a  whole),  that 
this  literature  must,  in  so  far  as  it  is  truly  repre- 
sentative of,  and  therefore  truly  valuable  to,  the 
time  in  which  it  is  produced,  reflect  and  criticise 
the  manners,  tastes,  development,  the  life,  in  fact, 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

of  the  age  for  whose  service  it  was  devised.  We 
have,  of  course,  critical  literature  probing  the  past : 
we  have  philosophical  literature  prophesying  the 
future ;  but  the  truly  representative  literature  of 
every  age  is  the  creative,  which  shows  its  people  its 
natural  face  in  a  glass,  and  leaves  to  posterity  the 
record  of  the  manner  of  man  it  found.  In  one 
sense,  indeed,  creative  literature  must  inevitably 
be  critical  as  well,  critical  in  that  it  employs  the 
double  methods  of  analysis  and  synthesis,  dis- 
secting motives  and  tendencies  first,  and  then 
from  this  examination  building  up  a  type,  a 
sample  of  the  representative  man  and  woman  of 
its  epoch.  The  truest  fiction  of  any  given  century, 
yes,  and  the  truest  poetry,  too  (though  the  im- 
pressionist may  deny  it),  must  be  a  criticism  of 
life,  must  reflect  its  surroundings.  Men  pass,  and 
fashions  change  ;  but  in  the  literature  of  their 
day  their  characters,  their  tendencies,  remain 
crystallised  for  all  time  :  and  what  we  know  of 
the  England  of  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare,  we 
know  wholly  and  absolutely  in  the  truly  repre- 
sentative, truly  creative,  because  truly  critical 
literature  which  they  have  left  to  those  that  come 
after. 

It  is,  then,  the  privilege,  it  is  more,  it  is  the 
duty  of  the  man  of  letters  to  speak  out,  to  be  fear- 
less, to  be  frank,  to  give  no  ear  to  the  puritans  of 
his  hour,  to  have  no  care  for  the  objections  of 
prudery  ;  the  life  that  he  lives  is  the  life  he  must 
depict,  if  his  work  is  to  be  of  any  lasting  value. 
He  must  be  frank,  but  he  must  be  something 
more.  He  must  remember — hourly  and  momently 
he  must  remember — that  his  virtue,  step  by  step, 
inch  by  inch,  imperceptibly  melts  into  the  vice 
6 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  STANDARD 

which  stands  at  its  pole  ;  and  that  (to  employ 
Aristotelian  phraseology  for  the  moment)  there 
is  a  sort  of  middle  point,  a  centre  of  equilibrium, 
to  pass  which  is  to  disturb  and  overset  the  entire 
fabric  of  his  labours.  Midway  between  liberty 
and  license,  in  literature  as  in  morals,  stands  the 
pivot  of  good  taste,  the  centre-point  of  art.  The 
natural  inclination  of  frankness,  the  inclination 
of  the  virtue  in  the  rough,  is  to  blunder  on  reso- 
lutely with  an  indomitable  and  damning  sincerity, 
till  all  is  said  that  can  be  said,  and  art  is  lost  in 
photography.  The  inclination  of  frankness,  re- 
strained by  and  tutored  to  the  limitations  of  art 
and  beauty,  is  to  speak  so  much  as  is  in  accord- 
ance with  the  moral  idea  :  and  then,  at  the  point 
where  ideas  melt  into  mere  report,  mere  journal- 
istic detail,  to  feel  intuitively  the  restraining,  the 
saving  influence  of  reticence.  In  every  age  there 
has  been  some  point  (its  exact  position  has  varied, 
it  is  true,  but  the  point  has  always  been  there)  at 
which  speech  stopped  short ;  and  the  literature 
which  has  most  faithfully  reflected  the  manners 
of  that  age,  the  literature,  in  fine,  which  has  sur- 
vived its  little  hour  of  popularity,  and  has  lived 
and  is  still  living,  has  inevitably,  invariably,  and 
without  exception  been  the  literature  which  stayed 
its  hand  and  voice  at  the  point  at  which  the  taste 
of  the  age,  the  age's  conception  of  art,  set  up  its 
statue  of  reticence,  with  her  finger  to  her  lips, 
and  the  inscription  about  her  feet :  "So  far 
shalt  thou  go,  and  no  further." 

We  have  now,  it  seems,  arrived  at  one  con- 
sideration, which  must  always  limit  the  liberty  of 
frankness,  namely,  the  standard  of  contemporary 
taste.  The  modesty  that  hesitates  to  allign  itself 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

with  that  standard  is  a  shortcoming,  the  audacity 
that  rushes  beyond  is  a  violence  to  the  unchang- 
ing law  of  literature.  But  the  single  consideration 
is  insufficient.  If  we  are  content  with  the  criterion 
of  contemporary  taste  alone,  our  standard  of 
judgment  becomes  purely  historical  :  we  are  left, 
so  to  speak,  with  a  sliding  scale  which  readjusts 
itself  to  every  new  epoch  :  we  have  no  permanent 
and  universal  test  to  apply  to  the  literature  of 
different  ages  :  in  a  word,  comparative  criticism 
is  impossible.  We  feel  at  once  that  we  need,  be- 
sides the  shifting  standard  of  contemporary  taste, 
some  fixed  unit  of  judgment  that  never  varies, 
some  foot-rule  that  applies  with  equal  infallibility 
to  the  literature  of  early  Greece  and  to  the  litera- 
ture of  later  France  ;  and  such  an  unit,  such  a 
foot-rule,  can  only  be  found  in  the  final  test  of  all 
art,  the  necessity  of  the  moral  idea.  We  must,  in 
distinguishing  the  thing  that  may  be  said  fairly 
and  artistically  from  the  thing  whose  utterance 
is  inadmissible,  we  must  in  such  a  decision  con- 
trol our  judgment  by  two  standards — the  one,  the 
shifting  standard  of  contemporary  taste  :  the 
other,  the  permanent  standard  of  artistic  justifi- 
cation, the  presence  of  the  moral  idea.  With  these 
two  elements  in  action,  we  ought,  I  think,  to  be 
able  to  estimate  with  tolerable  fairness  the  amount 
of  reticence  in  any  age  which  ceases  to  be  a  short- 
coming, the  amount  of  frankness  which  begins 
to  be  a  violence  in  the  literature  of  the  period. 
We  ought,  with  these  two  elements  in  motion,  to 
be  able  to  employ  a  scheme  of  comparative 
criticism  which  will  prevent  us  from  encouraging 
that  retarding  and  dangerous  doctrine  that  what 
was  expedient  and  justifiable,  for  instance,  in 
8 


THE   AGE   OF   HERODOTUS 

the  dramatists  of  the  Restoration  is  expedient 
and  justifiable  in  the  playwrights  of  our  own 
Victorian  era ;  we  ought,  too,  to  be  able  to 
arrive  instinctively  at  a  sense  of  the  limits  of 
art,  and  to  appreciate  the  point  at  which  frank- 
ness becomes  a  violence,  in  that  it  has  degenerated 
into  mere  brawling,  animated  neither  by  purpose 
nor  idea.  Let  us,  then,  consider  these  two  standards 
of  taste  and  art  separately  :  and  first,  let  us  give 
a  brief  attention  to  the  contemporary  standard. 

We  may,  I  think,  take  it  as  a  rough  working 
axiom  that  the  point  of  reticence  in  literature, 
judged  by  a  contemporary  standard,  should  be 
settled  by  the  point  of  reticence  in  the  conversa- 
tion of  the  taste  and  culture  of  the  age.  Literature 
is,  after  all,  simply  the  ordered,  careful  exposition 
of  the  thought  of  its  period,  seeking  the  best 
matter  of  the  time,  and  setting  it  forth  in  the  best 
possible  manner  ;  and  it  is  surely  clear  that  what 
is  written  in  excess  of  what  is  spoken  (in  excess  I 
mean  on  the  side  of  license)  is  a  violence  to,  a 
misrepresentation  of,  the  period  to  whose  service 
the  literature  is  devoted.  The  course  of  the  highest 
thought  of  the  time  should  be  the  course  of  its 
literature,  the  limit  of  the  most  delicate  taste  of 
the  time  the  limit  of  literary  expression  :  what- 
ever falls  below  that  standard  is  a  shortcoming, 
whatever  exceeds  it  a  violence.  Obviously  the 
standard  varies  immensely  with  the  period.  It 
would  be  tedious,  nor  is  it  necessary  to  our  pur- 
pose, to  make  a  long  historical  research  into  the 
development  of  taste  ;  but  a  few  striking  examples 
may  help  us  to  appreciate  its  variations. 

To  begin  with  a  very  early  stage  of  literature, 
we  find  among  the  Heracleidae  of  Herodotus  a  stage 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

of  contemporary  taste  which  is  the  result  of  pure 
brutality.  It  is  clear  that  literature  adjusted  to  the 
frankness  of  the  uxorious  pleasantries  of  Cand- 
aules  and  Gyges  would  justifiably  assume  a 
degree  of  license  which,  reasonable  enough  in  its 
environment,  would  be  absolutely  impossible, 
directly  the  influences  of  civilisation  began  to 
make  themselves  felt.  The  age  is  one  of  unre- 
strained brutality,  and  the  literature  which  repre- 
sented it  would,  without  violence  to  the  con- 
temporary taste,  be  brutal  too.  To  pass  at  a  bound 
to  the  Rome  of  Juvenal  is  again  to  be  transported 
to  an  age  of  national  sensuality  :  the  escapades  of 
Messalina  are  the  inevitable  outcome  of  a  national 
taste  that  is  swamped  and  left  putrescent  by 
limitless  self-indulgence  ;  and  the  literature  which 
represented  this  taste  would,  without  violence, 
be  lascivious  and  polluted  to  its  depth.  In  con- 
tinuing, with  a  still  wider  sweep,  to  the  England 
of  Shakespeare,  we  find  a  new  development  of 
taste  altogether.  Brutality  is  softened,  licentious- 
ness is  restrained,  immorality  no  longer  stalks 
abroad  shouting  its  coarse  phrases  at  every  way- 
farer who  passes  the  Mermaid  or  the  Globe.  But, 
even  among  types  of  purity,  reticence  is  little 
known.  The  innuendoes  are  whispered  under 
the  breath,  but  when  once  the  voice  is  lowered,  it 
matters  little  what  is  said.  Rosalind  and  Celia 
enjoy  their  little  doubles  entendres  together.  Hero's 
wedding  morning  is  an  occasion  for  delicate  hints 
of  experiences  to  come.  Hamlet  plies  the  coarsest 
suggestions  upon  Ophelia  in  the  intervals  of  a 
theatrical  performance.  The  language  reflects 
the  taste  :  we  feel  no  violence  here.  To  take  but 
one  more  instance,  let  us  end  with  Sheridan.  By 
10 


FROM   SHAKESPEARE  TO   SHERIDAN 

his  time  speech  had  been  refined  by  sentiment, 
and  the  most  graceful  compliments  glide,  without 
effort,  from  the  lips  of  the  adept  courtier.  But, 
even  still,  in  the  drawing-room  of  fashion,  delicate 
morsels  of  scandal  are  discussed  by  his  fine  ladies 
with  a  freedom  which  is  absolutely  unknown  to 
the  May  fair  of  the  last  half-century,  where  innu- 
endo might  be  conveyed  by  the  eye  and  suggested 
by  the  smile,  but  would  never,  so  reticent  has 
taste  become,  find  the  frank  emphatic  utterance 
which  brought  no  blush  to  the  cheek  of  Mrs. 
Candour  and  Lady  Sneerwell.  In  the  passage  of 
time  reticence  has  become  more  and  more  pro- 
nounced ;  and  literature,  moving,  as  it  must, 
with  the  age,  has  assumed  in  its  normal  and 
wholesome  form  the  degree  of  silence  which  it 
finds  about  it. 

The  standard  of  taste  in  literature,  then,  so  far 
as  it  responds  to  contemporary  judgment,  should 
be  regulated  by  the  normal  taste  of  the  hale  and 
cultured  man  of  its  age  :  it  should  steer  a  middle 
course  between  the  prudery  of  the  manse,  which 
is  for  hiding  everything  vital,  and  the  effrontery 
of  the  pot-house,  which  makes  for  ribaldry  and 
bawdry  ;  and  the  more  it  approximates  to  the 
exact  equilibrium  of  its  period,  the  more  thor- 
oughly does  it  become  representative  of  the  best 
taste  of  its  time,  the  more  certain  is  it  of  permanent 
recognition.  The  literature  of  shortcoming  and 
the  literature  of  violence  have  their  reward. 

"  They  have  their  day,  and  cease  to  be  "  ; 

the  literature  which  reflects  the  hale  and  whole- 
some frankness  of  its  age  can  be  read,  with  pleas- 
ure and  profit,  long  after  its  openness  of  speech 
ii 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

and  outlook  has  ceased  to  reproduce  the  surround- 
ing life.  The  environment  is  ephemeral,  but  the 
literature  is  immortal.  But  why  is  the  literature 
immortal  ?  Why  is  it  that  a  play  like  Pericles,  for 
instance,  full  as  it  is  of  scenes  which  revolt  the 
moral  taste,  has  lived  and  is  a  classic  forever, 
while  innumerable  contemporary  pieces  of  no 
less  genius  (for  Pericles  is  no  masterpiece)  have 
passed  into  oblivion  ?  Why  is  it  that  the  impurity 
of  Pericles  strikes  the  reader  scarcely  at  all,  while 
the  memory  dwells  upon  its  beauties  and  forgets 
its  foulness  in  recollection  of  its  refinement  ?  The 
reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  Pericles  is  not  only  free 
of  offence  when  judged  by  the  taste  of  its  age,  it 
is  no  less  blameless  when  we  subject  it  to  the  test 
by  which  all  literature  is  judged  at  last :  it  con- 
forms to  the  standard  of  art ;  it  is  permeated  by 
the  moral  idea.  The  standard  of  art — the  presence 
of  the  idea — the  two  expressions  are,  I  believe, 
synonymous.  It  is  easy  enough  to  babble  of  the 
beauty  of  things  considered  apart  from  their 
meaning,  it  is  easy  enough  to  dilate  on  the  satis- 
faction of  art  in  itself,  but  all  these  phrases  are 
merely  collocations  of  terms,  empty  and  mean- 
ingless. A  thing  can  only  be  artistic  by  virtue  of 
the  idea  it  suggests  to  us  ;  when  the  idea  is  coarse, 
ungainly,  unspeakable,  the  object  that  suggests  it  is 
coarse,  ungainly,  unspeakable  ;  art  and  ethics 
must  always  be  allied  in  that  the  merit  of  the  art 
is  dependent  on  the  merit  of  the  idea  it  prompts. 
Perhaps  I  shall  show  my  meaning  more 
clearly  by  an  example  from  the  more  tangible 
art  of  painting  ;  and  let  me  take  as  an  instance 
an  artist  who  has  produced  pictures  at  once  the 
most  revolting  and  most  moral  of  any  in  the 
12 


THE  MORALITY  OF  HOGARTH 

history  of  English  art.  I  mean  Hogarth.  We  are  all 
familiar  with  his  coarsenesses  ;  all  these  have  we 
known  from  our  youth  up.  But  it  is  only  the 
schoolboy  who  searches  the  Bible  for  its  indecent 
passages  ;  when  we  are  become  men,  we  put 
away  such  childish  satisfactions.  Then  we  begin 
to  appreciate  the  idea  which  underlies  the  sub- 
ject :  we  feel  that  Hogarth — 

"  Whose  pictured  morals  charm  the  mind, 
And  through  the  eye  correct  the  heart  " 

was,  even  in  his  grossest  moments,  profoundly 
moral,  entirely  sane,  because  he  never  dallied 
lasciviously  with  his  subject,  because  he  did  not 
put  forth  vice  with  the  pleasing  semblance  of 
virtue,  because,  like  all  hale  and  wholesome  critics 
of  life,  he  condemned  excess,  and  pictured  it 
merely  to  portray  the  worthlessness,  the  weari- 
ness, the  dissatisfaction  of  lust  and  license.  Art, 
we  say,  claims  every  subject  for  her  own  ;  life 
is  open  to  her  ken  ;  she  may  fairly  gather  her 
subjects  where  she  will.  Most  true.  But  there  is 
all  the  difference  in  the  world  between  drawing 
life  as  we  find  it,  sternly  and  relentlessly,  survey- 
ing it  all  the  while  from  outside  with  the  calm, 
unflinching  gaze  of  criticism,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  yielding  ourselves  to  the  warmth  and  colour 
of  its  excesses,  losing  our  judgment  in  the  ecstasies 
of  the  joy  of  life,  becoming,  in  a  word,  effeminate. 
The  man  lives  by  ideas  ;  the  woman  by  sen- 
sations ;  and  while  the  man  remains  an  artist  so 
long  as  he  holds  true  to  his  own  view  of  life,  the 
woman  becomes  one  as  soon  as  she  throws  off  the 
habit  of  her  sex,  and  learns  to  rely  upon  her  judg- 
ment, and  not  upon  her  senses.  It  is  only  when 

13 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

we  regard  life  with  the  untrammelled  view  of  the 
impartial  spectator,  when  we  pierce  below  the 
substance  for  its  animating  idea,  that  we  approxi- 
mate to  the  artistic  temperament.  It  is  unmanly, 
it  is  effeminate, it  is  inartisticto  gloat  over  pleasure, 
to  revel  in  immoderation,  to  become  passion's 
slave  ;  and  literature  demands  as  much  calmness 
of  judgment,  as  much  reticence,  as  life  itself.  The 
man  who  loses  reticence  loses  self-respect,  and 
the  man  who  has  no  respect  for  himself  will 
scarcely  find  others  to  venerate  him.  After  all,  the 
world  generally  takes  us  at  our  own  valuation. 

We  have  now,  I  trust,  arrived  (though,  it  may 
be,  by  a  rather  circuitous  journey)  at  something 
like  a  definite  and  reasonable  law  for  the  exercise 
of  reticence  ;  it  only  remains  to  consider  by 
what  test  we  shall  most  easily  discover  the  presence 
or  absence  of  the  animating  moral  idea  which  we 
have  found  indispensable  to  art.  It  seems  to  me 
that  three  questions  will  generally  suffice.  Does 
the  work,  we  should  ask  ourselves,  make  for  that 
standard  of  taste  which  is  normal  to  wholesome- 
ness  and  sanity  of  judgment  ?  Does  it,  or  does  it 
not,  encourage  us  to  such  a  line  of  life  as  is  recom- 
mended, all  question  of  tenet  and  creed  apart,  by 
the  experience  of  the  age,  as  the  life  best  calcu- 
lated to  promote  individual  and  general  good  ? 
And  does  it  encourage  to  this  life  in  language  and 
by  example  so  chosen  as  not  to  offend  the  sus- 
ceptibilities of  that  ordinarily  strong  and  un- 
affected taste  which,  after  all,  varies  very  little 
with  the  changes  of  the  period  and  development  ? 
When  creative  literature  satisfies  these  three  re- 
quirements— when  it  is  sane,  equable,  and  well 
spoken,  then  it  is  safe  to  say  it  conforms  to  the 


MODERN  REALISM 


moral  idea,  and  is  consonant  with  art.  By  its 
sanity  it  eludes  the  risk  of  effeminate  demon- 
stration ;  by  its  choice  of  language  it  avoids 
brutality  ;  and  between  these  two  poles,  it  may 
be  affirmed  without  fear  of  question,  true  taste 
will  and  must  be  found  to  lie. 

These  general  considerations,  already  too  far 
prolonged,  become  of  immediate  interest  to  us 
as  soon  as  we  attempt  to  apply  them  to  the  liter- 
ature of  our  own  half-century,  and  I  propose 
concluding  what  I  wished  to  say  on  the  necessity 
of  reticence  by  considering,  briefly  and  without 
mention  of  names,  the  realistic  movement  in 
English  literature  which,  under  different  titles, 
and  protected  by  the  aegis  of  various  schools,  has 
proved,  without  doubt,  the  most  interesting  and 
suggestive  development  in  the  poetry  and  fiction 
of  our  time.  During  the  last  quarter  of  a  century, 
more  particularly,  the  English  man-of-letters  has 
been  indulging,  with  an  entirely  new  freedom,  his 
national  birthright  of  outspokenness,  and  during 
the  last  twelve  months  there  have  been  no  un- 
certain indications  that  this  freedom  of  speech 
is  degenerating  into  license  which  some  of  us 
cannot  but  view  with  regret  and  apprehension. 
The  writers  and  the  critics  of  contemporary 
literature  have,  it  would  seem,  alike  lost  their 
heads  ;  they  have  gone  out  into  the  byways  and 
hedges  in  search  of  the  new  thing,  and  have 
brought  into  the  study  and  subjected  to  the 
microscope  mean  objects  of  the  roadside,  whose 
analysis  may  be  of  value  to  science,  but  is  abso- 
lutely foreign  to  art.  The  age  of  brutality,  pure 
and  simple,  is  dead  with  us,  it  is  true  ;  but  the 
age  of  effeminacy  appears,  if  one  is  to  judge  by 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

recent  evidence,  to  be  growing  to  its  dawn.  The 
day  that  follows  will,  if  it  fulfils  the  promise  of 
its  morning,  be  very  serious  and  very  detrimental 
to  our  future  literature. 

Every  great  productive  period  of  literature  has 
been  the  result  of  some  internal  or  external  re- 
vulsion of  feeling,  some  current  of  ideas.  This  is 
a  commonplace.  The  greatest  periods  of  produc- 
tion have  been  those  when  the  national  mind  has 
been  directed  to  some  vast  movement  of  emanci- 
pation— the  discovery  of  new  countries,  the  defeat 
of  old  enemies,  the  opening  of  fresh  possibilities. 
Literature  is  best  stimulated  by  stirrings  like 
these.  Now,  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  in  English 
history  has  been  singularly  sterile  of  important 
improvements.  There  has  been  no  very  inspiring 
acquisition  to  territory  or  to  knowledge  :  there 
has  been,  in  consequence,  no  marked  influx  of 
new  ideas.  The  mind  has  been  thrown  back  upon 
itself ;  lacking  stimulus  without,  it  has  sought 
inspiration  within,  and  the  most  characteristic 
literature  of  the  time  has  been  introspective. 
Following  one  course,  it  has  betaken  itself  to  that 
intimately  analytical  fiction  which  we  associate 
primarily  with  America  ;  it  has  sifted  motives 
and  probed  psychology,  with  the  result  that  it  has 
proved  an  exceedingly  clever,  exact,  and  scien- 
tific, but  scarcely  stimulating,  or  progressive 
school  of  literature.  Following  another  course, 
it  has  sought  for  subject-matter  in  the  discussion 
of  passions  and  sensations,  common,  doubtless, 
to  every  age  of  mankind,  interesting  and  neces- 
sary, too,  in  their  way,  but  passions  and  sensations 
hitherto  dissociated  with  literature,  hitherto, 
perhaps,  scarcely  realised  to  their  depth  and 
16 


SWINBURNE'S  INNOVATIONS 

intensity.  It  is  in  this  development  that  the  new 
school  of  realism  has  gone  furthest ;  and  it  is  in 
this  direction  that  the  literature  of  the  future 
seems  likely  to  follow.  It  is,  therefore,  not  without 
value  to  consider  for  a  moment  whither  this  new 
frankness  is  leading  us,  and  how  far  its  freedom 
is  reconciled  to  that  standard  of  necessary  reti- 
cence which  I  have  tried  to  indicate  in  these 
pages. 

This  present  tendency  to  literary  frankness 
had  its  origin,  I  think,  no  less  than  twenty-eight 
years  ago.*  It  was  then  that  the  dovecotes  of 
English  taste  were  tremulously  fluttered  by  the 
coming  of  a  new  poet,  whose  naked  outspoken- 
ness startled  his  readers  into  indignation.  Liter- 
ature, which  had  retrograded  into  a  melancholy 
sameness,  found  itself  convulsed  by  a  sudden 
access  of  passion,  which  was  probably  without 
parallel  since  the  age  of  the  silver  poets  of  Rome. 
This  new  singer  scrupled  not  to  revel  in  sensa- 
tions which  for  years  had  remained  unmentioned 
upon  the  printed  page  ;  he  even  chose  for  his 
subjects  refinements  of  lust,  which  the  commonly 
healthy  Englishman  believed  to  have  become 
extinct  with  the  time  of  Juvenal.  Here  was  an 
innovation  which  was  absolutely  alien  to  the 
standard  of  contemporary  taste — an  innovation, 
I  believe,  that  was  equally  opposed  to  that  final 
moderation  without  which  literature  is  lifeless. 

Let  us  listen  for  one  moment : 

"  By  the  ravenous  teeth  that  have  smitten 
Through  the  kisses  that  blossom  and  bud, 

By  the  lips  intertwisted  and  bitten 
Till  the  foam  has  a  savour  of  blood, 

*  This  article  originally  appeared  in  1894. 

17  c 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

By  the  pulse  as  it  rises  and  falters, 

By  the  hands  as  they  slacken  and  strain, 
I  adjure  thee,  respond  from  thine  altars, 
Our  Lady  of  Pain. 

As  of  old  when  the  world's  heart  was  lighter, 
Through  thy  garments  the  grace  of  thee  glows, 

The  white  wealth  of  thy  body  made  whiter 
By  the  blushes  of  amorous  blows, 

And  seamed  with  sharp  lips  and  fierce  fingers, 
And  branded  by  kisses  that  bruise  ; 

When  all  shall  be  gone  that  now  lingers, 
Ah,  what  shall  we  lose  ? 

Thou  wert  fair  in  thy  fearless  old  fashion, 

And  thy  limbs  are  as  melodies  yet, 
And  move  to  the  music  of  passion 

With  lithe  and  lascivious  regret, 
What  ailed  us,  O  gods,  to  desert  you 

For  creeds  that  refuse  and  restrain  ? 
Come  down  and  redeem  us  from  virtue, 
Our  Lady  of  Pain." 

This  was  twenty-eight  years  ago  ;  and  still  the 
poetry  lives.  At  first  sight  it  would  seem  as  though 
the  desirable  reticence,  upon  which  we  have  been 
insisting,  were  as  yet  unnecessary  to  immortality. 
A  quarter  of  a  century  has  passed,  it  might  be 
argued,  and  the  verse  is  as  fresh  to-day  and  as 
widely  recognised  as  it  was  in  its  morning  :  is 
not  this  a  proof  that  art  asks  for  no  moderation  ? 
I  believe  not.  It  is  true  that  the  poetry  lives,  that 
we  all  recognise,  at  some  period  of  our  lives,  the 
grasp  and  tenacity  of  its  influence  ;  that,  even 
when  the  days  come  in  which  we  say  we  have  no 
pleasure  in  it,  we  still  turn  to  it  at  times  for  some- 
thing we  do  not  find  elsewhere.  But  the  thing  we 
seek  is  not  the  matter,  but  the  manner.  The 
18 


THE  SURE  REVENGES  OF  ART 

poetry  is  living,  not  by  reason  of  its  unrestrained 
frankness,  but  in  spite  of  it,  for  the  sake  of  some- 
thing else.  That  sweet  singer  who  charmed  and 
shocked  the  audiences  of  1866,  charms  us,  if  he 
shocks  us  not  now,  by  virtue  of  the  one  new 
thing  that  he  imported  into  English  poetry,  the 
unique  and  as  yet  imperishable  faculty  of  musical 
possibilities  hitherto  unattained.  There  is  no 
such  music  in  all  the  range  of  English  verse,  seek 
where  you  will,  as  there  is  in  him.  But  the  per- 
fection of  the  one  talent,  its  care,  its  elaboration, 
have  resulted  in  a  corresponding  decay  of  those 
other  faculties  by  which  alone,  in  the  long  run, 
poetry  can  live.  Open  him  where  you  will,  there 
is  in  his  poetry  neither  construction  nor  propor- 
tion ;  no  development,  no  sustained  dramatic 
power.  Open  him  where  you  will,  you  acquire  as 
much  sense  of  his  meaning  and  purpose  from  any 
two  isolated  stanzas  as  from  the  study  of  a  whole 
poem.  There  remains  in  your  ears,  when  you 
have  ceased  from  reading,  the  echo  only  of  a 
beautiful  voice,  chanting,  as  it  were,  the  melodies 
of  some  outland  tongue. 

Is  this  the  sort  of  poetry  that  will  survive  with- 
out challenge  the  trouble  of  the  ages  ?  It  cannot 
so  survive.  When  the  time  comes  that  some  newer 
singer  discovers  melodies  as  yet  unknown,  melo- 
dies which  surpass  in  their  modulations  and 
varieties  those  poems  and  ballads  of  twenty-eight 
years  ago,  what  will  be  left  of  the  earlier  singer,  to 
which  we  shall  of  necessity  return  ?  A  message  ? 
No.  Philosophy  ?  No.  A  new  vision  of  life  ?  No. 
A  criticism  of  contemporary  existence  ?  Assuredly 
not.  There  remains  the  melody  alone  ;  and  this, 
when  once  it  is  surpassed,  will  remain  little 

19 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

more  than  a  literary  curiosity  and  a  faded  charm. 
Art  brings  in  her  revenges,  and  this  will  be  of 
them. 

But  the  new  movement  did  not  stop  here.  If, 
in  the  poet  we  have  been  discussing,  we  have 
found  the  voice  among  us  that  corresponds  to 
the  decadent  voices  of  the  failing  Roman  Re- 
public, there  has  reached  us  from  France  another 
utterance,  which  I  should  be  inclined  to  liken  to 
the  outspoken  brutality  of  Restoration  drama. 
Taste  no  longer  fails  on  the  ground  of  a  delicate, 
weakly  dalliance,  it  begins  to  see  its  own  limita- 
tions, and  springs  to  the  opposite  pole.  It  will 
now  be  virile,  full  of  the  sap  of  life,  strong,  robust, 
and  muscular.  It  will  hurry  us  out  into  the  fields, 
will  show  us  the  coarser  passions  of  the  common 
farm-hand  ;  at  any  expense  it  will  paint  the  life 
it  finds  around  it ;  it  will  at  least  be  consonant 
with  that  standard  of  want  of  taste  which  it  falsely 
believes  to  be  contemporary.  We  get  a  realistic 
fiction  abroad,  and  we  begin  to  copy  it  at  home. 
We  will  trace  the  life  of  the  travelling  actor, 
follow  him  into  the  vulgar,  sordid  surroundings 
which  he  chooses  for  the  palace  of  his  love,  be  it 
a  pottery-shed  or  the  ill-furnished  lodging-room 
with  its  black  horsehair  sofa — we  will  draw  them 
all,  and  be  faithful  to  the  lives  we  live.  Is  that  the 
sort  of  literature  that  will  survive  the  trouble  of 
the  ages  ?  It  cannot  survive.  We  are  no  longer 
untrue  to  our  time,  perhaps,  if  we  are  to  seek  for 
the  heart  of  that  time  in  the  lowest  and  meanest 
of  its  representatives  ;  but  we  are  untrue  to  art, 
untrue  to  the  record  of  our  literary  past,  when 
we  are  content  to  turn  for  our  own  inspiration  to 
anything  but  the  best  line  of  thought,  the  highest 
20 


EFFEMINACY  AND  BRUTALITY 

school  of  life,  through  which  we  are  moving. 
This  grosser  realism  is  no  more  representative 
of  its  time  than  were  the  elaborate  pastiches  of 
classical  degradation  ;  it  is  as  though  one  should 
repeople  Eden  with  creatures  imagined  from  a 
study  of  the  serpent's  head.  In  the  history  of 
literature  this  movement,  too,  will  with  the  lapse 
of  time  pass  unrecognised  ;  it  has  mourned  un- 
ceasingly to  an  age  which  did  not  lack  for  innocent 
piping  and  dancing  in  its  market-places. 

The  two  developments  of  realism  of  which  we 
have  been  speaking  seem  to  me  to  typify  the  two 
excesses  into  which  frankness  is  inclined  to  fall ; 
on  the  one  hand,  the  excess  prompted  by  effemi- 
nacy— that  is  to  say,  by  the  want  of  restraint 
which  starts  from  enervated  sensation  ;  and  on 
the  other,  the  excess  which  results  from  a  certain 
brutal  virility,  which  proceeds  from  coarse  famil- 
iarity with  indulgence.  The  one  whispers,  the 
other  shouts  ;  the  one  is  the  language  of  the 
courtesan,  the  other  of  the  bargee.  What  we  miss 
in  both  alike  is  that  true  frankness  which  springs 
from  the  artistic  and  moral  temperament ;  the 
episodes  are  no  part  of  a  whole  in  unity  with  itself ; 
the  impression  they  leave  upon  the  reader  is  not 
the  impression  of  Hogarth's  pictures  ;  in  one 
form  they  employ  all  their  art  to  render  vice 
attractive,  in  the  other,  with  absolutely  no  art  at 
all,  they  merely  reproduce,  with  the  fidelity  of 
the  kodak,  scenes  and  situations  the  existence  of 
which  we  all  acknowledge,  while  taste  prefers  to 
forget  them. 

But  the  latest  development  of  literary  frank- 
ness is,  I  think,  the  most  insidious  and  fraught 
with  the  greatest  danger  to  art.  A  new  school  has 

21 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

arisen  which  combines  the  characteristics  of 
effeminacy  and  brutality.  In  its  effeminate  aspect 
it  plays  with  the  subtler  emotions  of  sensual 
pleasure,  on  its  brutal  side  it  has  developed  into 
that  class  of  fiction  which  for  want  of  a  better 
word  I  must  call  chirurgical.  In  poetry  it  deals 
with  very  much  the  same  passions  as  those  which 
we  have  traced  in  the  verse  to  which  allusion  has 
been  made  above  ;  but,  instead  of  leaving  these 
refinements  of  lust  to  the  haunts  to  which  they 
are  fitted,  it  has  introduced  them  into  the  domes- 
tic chamber,  and  permeated  marriage  with  the 
ardours  of  promiscuous  intercourse.  In  fiction  it 
infects  its  heroines  with  acquired  diseases  of 
names  unmentionable,  and  has  debased  the  beauty 
of  maternity  by  analysis  of  the  process  of  gesta- 
tion. Surely  the  inartistic  temperament  can 
scarcely  abuse  literature  further.  I  own  I  can 
conceive  nothing  less  beautiful. 

It  was  said  of  a  great  poet  by  a  little  critic  that 
he  wheeled  his  nuptial  couch  into  the  area  ;  but 
these  small  poets  and  smaller  novelists  bring  out 
their  sick  into  the  thoroughfare,  and  stop  the 
traffic  while  they  give  us  a  clinical  lecture  upon 
their  sufferings.  We  are  told  that  this  is  a  part  of 
the  revolt  of  woman,  and  certainly  our  women- 
writers  are  chiefly  to  blame.  It  is  out  of  date,  no 
doubt,  to  clamour  for  modesty  ;  but  the  woman 
who  describes  the  sensations  of  childbirth  does 
so,  it  is  to  be  presumed — not  as  the  writer  of 
advice  to  a  wife — but  as  an  artist  producing  liter- 
ature for  art's  sake.  And  so  one  may  fairly  ask  her  : 
How  is  art  served  by  all  this  ?  What  has  she  told 
us  that  we  did  not  all  know,  or  could  not  learn 
from  medical  manuals  ?  and  what  impression 

22 


THE  NAKED  AND  THE  NUDE 

has  she  left  us  over  and  above  the  memory  of 
her  unpalatable  details  ?  And  our  poets,  who 
know  no  rhyme  for  "  rest  "  but  that  "  breast  " 
whose  snowinesses  and  softnesses  they  are  for 
ever  describing  with  every  accent  of  indulgence, 
whose  eyes  are  all  for  frills,  if  not  for  garters,  what 
have  they  sung  that  was  not  sung  with  far  greater 
beauty  and  sincerity  in  the  days  when  frills  and 
garters  were  alluded  to  with  the  open  frankness 
that  cried  shame  on  him  who  evil  thought.  The 
one  extremity,  it  seems  to  me,  offends  against  the 
standard  of  contemporary  taste  ;  ("  people,"  as 
Hedda  Gabler  said,  "  do  not  say  such  things 
now  ") ;  the  other  extremity  rebels  against  that 
universal  standard  of  good  taste  that  has  from  the 
days  of  Milo  distinguished  between  the  naked 
and  the  nude.  We  are  losing  the  distinction  now  ; 
the  cry  for  realism,  naked  and  unashamed,  is 
borne  in  upon  us  from  every  side  : 

"  Rip  your  brother's  vices  open,  strip  your  own  foul 

passions  bare  ; 

Down  with  Reticence,  down  with  Reverence — for- 
ward— naked — let  them  stare." 

But  there  was  an  Emperor  once  (we  know  the 
story)  who  went  forth  among  his  people  naked. 
It  was  said  that  he  wore  fairy  clothes,  and  that 
only  the  unwise  could  fail  to  see  them.  At  last 
a  little  child  raised  its  voice  from  the  crowd  ! 
"  Why,  he  has  nothing  on,"  it  said.  And  so  these 
writers  of  ours  go  out  from  day  to  day,  girded  on, 
they  would  have  us  believe,  with  the  garments  of 
art  ;  and  fashion  has  lacked  the  courage  to  cry 
out  with  the  little  child  ;  "  They  have  nothing 
on ."  No  robe  of  art,  no  texture  of  skill,  they  whirl 

23 


RETICENCE  IN  LITERATURE 

before  us  in  a  bacchanalian  dance  naked  and 
unashamed.  But  the  time  will  come,  it  must, 
when  the  voices  of  the  multitude  will  take  up  the 
cry  of  the  child,  and  the  revellers  will  hurry  to 
their  houses  in  dismay.  Without  dignity,  without 
self-restraint,  without  the  morality  of  art,  liter- 
ature has  never  survived  ;  they  are  the  few  who 
rose  superior  to  the  baser  levels  of  their  time,  who 
stand  unimpugned  among  the  immortals  now. 
And  that  mortal  who  would  put  on  immortality 
must  first  assume  that  habit  of  reticence,  that 
garb  of  humility  by  which  true  greatness  is  best 
known.  To  endure  restraint — that  is  to  be  strong. 

April,  1894. 


24 


THE  ABUSE  OF  THE  SUPERLATIVE 

IN   one  of  Browning's   letters   to    Elizabeth 
Barrett   there    is    an    amusing    story    of   an 
amateur  critic   who  volunteered    his  "  abso- 
lutely frank  criticism  "  to  a  friend's  volume  of 
manuscript  sonnets.  He  started  on  the  first  sonnet 
with  marginal  notes  to  each  line  ;  and,  his  de- 
pression increasing  with  each  effort,  he  was  at 
last  left  without  the  possibility  of  a  further  super- 
lative. For  his  comments,  line  for  line,  were  as 
follows  : 

bad  badderest  worsterer 

worse  worser  worsterest 

worst  worserer  worserestest 

badder  worserest  worstestest 

badderer  worster 

Having  proved  himself  so  far  a  master  of  com- 
parison, the  critic,  says  Browning,  "  slapping  his 
forehead  like  an  emptied  strong-box,  declared 
himself  bankrupt,  and  honourably  incompetent 
to  satisfy  the  reasonable  expectations  of  the  rest 
of  the  series  !  "  The  story  is  good  as  a  story,  and 
it  is  something  more.  It  is  typical  of  a  large  amount 
of  current  criticism  and  of  ordinary  descriptive 
literature.  The  dominion  of  the  superlative  is, 
indeed,  a  marked  characteristic  of  facile  and 
thoughtless  writing ;  and  anyone  who  takes  the 
trouble  to  analyse  the  style  of  the  common  femi- 
nine novelist,  or  of  the  popular  form  of  cheap 
journalist,  will  find  that  its  apparent  forcefulness 
is  almost  entirely  derived  from  the  lavish  use  of 
the  third  degree  of  comparison.  In  the  language 

25 


THE  ABUSE  OF  THE  SUPERLATIVE 

of  the  decorative  newspaper,  we  are  living  in  an 
age  where  everything  is  "  most  impressive," 
"  most  heroic,"  and  "  most  immortal  "  ;  and, 
no  doubt,  if  we  only  knew  our  own  good  fortune, 
we  should  all  be  joining  in  the  chorus  of  self- 
congratulation.  In  the  meanwhile,  criticism  has 
now  and  then  something  to  say  on  the  other  side, 
and  there  are  a  few  arguments  against  the  super- 
lative, which  may  be  worth  a  page  or  two's  con- 
sideration. 

In  the  first  place,  it  must  be  obvious  that  the 
cases  in  which  the  superlative  can  be  justly  used 
are,  inevitably,  very  few.  Many  things  may  be 
"  good,"  but  only  one  from  the  many  can  be 
"  best  "  ;  and  though  an  Oxford  first-class  con- 
tains several  names,  Cambridge  has  (or  had  till 
very  lately)  only  one  Senior  Wrangler  a  year.  But 
the  writer  who  has  a  poverty  of  words  finds  much 
virtue  in  a  superlative.  To  use  it  saves  him  from 
the  labour  of  selection  ;  it  gives  a  certain  showy 
emphasis  to  his  sentence,  and,  to  the  unreflect- 
ing reader,  it  carries  a  kind  of  conviction.  Now, 
women  are  by  nature  more  careless  than  men  ; 
they  are  also  more  prone  to  enthusiasm.  It  is, 
therefore,  natural  that  the  lady  novelist  should 
be  particularly  given  to  the  superlative,  and, 
indeed,  some  of  the  choicest  flowers  of  over- 
emphasis are  to  be  found  in  the  favourites  of  the 
circulating  library.  Where  a  woman  would,  in 
writing  a  letter,  underline  the  adjective,  she  sub- 
stitutes in  her  novel  the  glowing  superlative. 
There  was  a  highly  successful,  and  really  meri- 
torious, romance  a  few  seasons  back,  in  which 
the  first  few  pages  contained  a  description  of  the 
return  of  a  master-of-hounds  from  hunting. 
26 


THE  STYLE  OF  MISS  SQUEERS 

There,  in  about  five  hundred  lines,  were  so  many 
synonyms  for  "  noisy,"  "  loud,"  "  bellowing," 
"  cracking,"  "  sibilant,"  "  shouting,"  "  yelling," 
"  banging,"  and  the  like,  with  such  a  decoration 
of  superlatives  to  emphasize  them,  that  the  sensi- 
tive reader  had  scarcely  ears  left  to  settle  down 
upon  the  story.  Like  the  distracted  Fanny  S queers, 
these  good  ladies  write,  "  screaming  out  loud  all 
the  time,"  and  the  result  of  the  cumulative  effort 
is  that  the  work  loses  effect  altogether.  The  in- 
dividual is  lost  in  the  mass,  and  the  method  is 
something  like  that  of  a  small  private  school, 
where  every  boy  receives  a  prize. 

But,  though  courtesy  gives  pride  of  place  to 
women,  they  are  by  no  means  the  only  offenders. 
Indeed,  since  the  influence  of  the  novel  is  clearly 
waning  with  us  just  now,  and  the  importance  of 
the  Press  is  increasing  every  month,  it  may  be 
fairly  said  that  in  journalism  the  "  superlative  " 
style  is  even  more  harmful  to  a  sense  of  literary 
proportion.  A  little  while  ago,  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm 
directed  the  shafts  of  his  wit  against  the  cliches  of 
the  modern  journalist,  and  the  tired  melancholy 
of  his  battered  method.  Hand  in  hand  with  that 
fossilized  style  goes  the  perpetual  abuse  of  the 
superlative,  one  of  the  most  tedious  fashions  of 
newspaper  ineptitude.  A  great  deal  of  literary 
criticism  has  always  been  done  in  the  style  of  the 
reporter,  and,  no  doubt,  questions  of  domestic 
economy  render  it  impossible  for  every  journal 
to  employ  a  staff  of  expert  reviewers.  But  to  the 
eye  of  Criticism  there  can  be  no  excuse  for  the 
presence  in  the  leading  "  dailies  "  of  much  of  the 
over-emphatic,  hysterical  bombast  that  is  forced 
week  by  week  to  do  its  own  neglected  duties 

27 


THE  ABUSE  OF  THE  SUPERLATIVE 

"  This,  we  say  it  without  hesitation,  is  one  of  the 
most  mature  productions  of  the  decade."  "  The 
denouement  is  the  most  unique  we  have  met  in 
recent  fiction."  The  old  phrases  ring  back  in  the 
old  changes.  No  one  really  believes  them.  Is  it 
not  time  that  they  were  decently  interred  ? 

Indeed,  that  same  expression  "  most  unique  " 
reminds  one  of  another  abuse  of  the  superlative — 
its  employment  in  connexions  where  it  really 
adds  nothing  to  the  sense,  since  the  word  it 
qualifies  is  implicitly  superlative.  A  thing  cannot 
be  more  than  "  unique  "  ;  if  it  is  "  unique  "  it 
is  already  isolated.  Nor  can  an  event  be  "  most 
singular  "  ;  if  it  is  "  singular  "  it  is  already  re- 
moved from  the  crowd  and  set  apart.  Then,  too, 
there  is  the  familiar  expression,  "  the  patient's 
condition  is  most  critical,"  which  is,  perhaps,  the 
acme  of  tautology.  For,  if  the  sick  man  has 
reached  the  crisis,  he  is  at  the  apex  of  the  disease  ; 
a  crisis  cannot  be  "  more  "  or  "  most  "  critical. 
The  word  itself  is,  in  short,  an  implicit  super- 
lative. 

It  may,  perhaps,  be  argued  that  these  are 
niceties,  and  that  the  broad  brush  of  journalism 
is  expressly  designed  to  sweep  away  such  par- 
ticularities. But  the  question  is  one  of  radical 
importance  ;  of  what  Arnold  called  an  "  incur- 
able defect  of  style."  For  after  all,  the  great 
arguments  against  the  indiscriminate  superlative 
are  its  insincerity  and  vulgarity,  and  the  harm 
which  such  qualities  must  inevitably  do  to  the 
public  mind.  No  man  can  use  the  perpetual 
superlative  sincerely,  since  he  cannot  frankly 
believe  that  everything  he  has  to  describe  is  for 
the  best  in  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds.  "  In 
28 


THE  QUIET  CONFIDENCE  OF  TRUTH 

the  rich  vocabulary  of  love,"  as  Tennyson  said, 
"  most  dearest  is  a  true  superlative  "  ;  but  lovers 
have  a  language  of  their  own,  and  the  critic  stops 
short  at  their  rose-garlanded  portals  !  Outside 
that  kingdom,  to  use  words  without  measuring , 
their  meaning  is  literary  insincerity,  and  that  is/ 
one  of  the  unpardonable  sins.  Moreover,  it  is 
vulgar  ;  and  in  literature  vulgarity  stands  side 
by  side  with  insincerity  in  the  pillory.  The  sen- 
tence glittering  with  superlatives  is  like  the  vulgar 
woman  who  blazes  with  too  many  diamonds  ; 
you  cannot  see  her  fingers  for  the  rings.  And, 
while  it  matters  very  little,  so  long  as  she  stays  at 
home  and  "  plays  the  fool  in  her  own  house,"  she 
begins  to  do  harm  directly  she  flaunts  it  abroad. 
Her  decorations  set  a  fashion  (in  paste)  for  the 
lower  middle-classes,  and  simplicity  is  at  a  dis- 
count. In  the  same  way,  every  meretricious  phrase 
that  is  given  currency  in  high  places  sets  a  pre- 
cedent for  the  circle  that  lies  just  below  it ;  the 
language  is  gradually  debased  ;  and  taste  and 
proportion  are  slowly  undermined.  Nor  must  this 
be  thought  too  serious  a  view  of  what  may  seem, 
at  first  sight,  a  trivial  trick  of  emphasis.  Nothing 
is  so  essential  to  literary  progress  as  a  sense  of 
proportion,  and  nothing  is  so  easily  upset.  When 
one  man  starts  shouting,  another  must  follow 
suit,  if  he  is  to  make  himself  heard  ;  and  soon  the 
whole  forum  is  in  an  uproar.  But  Truth  is  not 
found  in  clamour. 

"  Low  at  her  feet  the  wild  waves  howl  for  hate  ; 
She  is  so  calm,  and  they  so  passionate." 

In  quietness  and  confidence  is  the  strength  of 

literature,  and  confidence  can  only  be  earned,  as 

29 


THE  ABUSE  OF  THE  SUPERLATIVE 

alone  it  is  deserved,  by  moderation,  dignity,  and 
reticence.  Every  man  who  "  lives  down  "  the 
superlative  does  something,  however  small  his 
audience,  to  maintain  the  dignity  of  letters.  And 
it  may  safely  be  said  that,  wherever  the  literature 
of  a  country  lacks  dignity,  there  is  something 
amiss  with  the  national  life  and  character. 


3° 


SOME  MOVEMENTS 
IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN 
POETRY 

I. — THE  PERIOD  AND  THE  FIELD 

A  WIDE  and  broken  field  of  literary 
activity,  as  full  of  interest  as  of  vitality, 
is  spread  before  the  imagination  by 
even  a  brief  survey  or  bird's-eye  view  of  the 
principal  movements  which  have  affected  the 
poetry  of  the  Victorian  era.  That  era  is  now  not 
only  closed,  but  to  some  extent  discounted  ;  and 
it  is  not  unnatural  that  we  should  already  begin 
to  regard  it  as  a  "  portion  of  the  past  "  and  to  feel 
sufficiently  removed  from  it  to  recount  its  vicis- 
situdes and  to  reckon  up  its  achievements.  And 
in  the  field  of  poetry  this  task  is  rendered  less 
difficult  by  the  fact  that  the  flowering  period  of 
Victorian  poetry  had  actually  spent  itself  before 
the  death  of  Tennyson,  now  more  than  twenty 
years  ago.  The  poetical  activity  of  the  last  ten 
years  of  the  nineteeth  century  was,  it  is  true, 
marked  by  a  feverish  and  fitful  energy  in 
certain  fields,  side  by  side  with  steady  and  pro- 
gressive production  in  others  ;  and  these  symp- 
toms clearly  imply  the  healthy  survival  of  poetic 
intention  and  ambition.  Still,  despite  these  sug- 
gestive activities,  the  last  representative  of  the 
characteristic  literary  movements  of  the  age  had 
already  passed  away  before  there  became  any 
question  of  the  succession  of  the  laureateship.  And 
so  we  are,  perhaps,  already  emancipated  enough 
from  the  partisan  influence  of  the  movements 

33  D 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

which  they  represented  to  be  able  to  regard 
their  work,  if  not  altogether  dispassionately,  at 
least  with  some  degree  of  critical  interest ;  we 
can  see  something  of  the  import  and  effect  of  the 
movements  which  at  the  time  of  their  preva- 
lence it  was  more  difficult  to  distinguish  and 
discount.  Such,  at  any  rate,  is  the  object  of  the 
present  survey,  which  will  confine  itself  entirely 
to  poetical  movements  in  the  Victorian  era,  and 
will  endeavour  to  trace  their  succession  and  inter- 
relation, with  some  reference,  where  possible,  to 
their  influence  upon  the  condition  of  English 
poetry  at  the  present  moment. 

And,  first,  it  is  necessary  to  premise  that  the 
survey  is  one  ot  movements  only ;  clearly  no  attempt 
could  be  made  in  so  restricted  a  space  to  give  a 
complete  conspectus  of  all  the  poetry  of  the  period. 
But  the  Victorian  era,  in  politics,  in  thought,  and 
in  literature  was  pre-eminently  an  era  of  move- 
ments ;  and  poetry,  which  so  closely  reflects  the 
tone  and  temper  of  its  age,  could  scarcely  fail  to 
be  affected  by  them.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  in- 
terests and  anxieties  of  the  Victorian  period 
entered  into  its  poetry  with  an  emphasis  almost 
unparalleled  in  the  history  of  English  literature. 
The  gradual  advance  of  science,  the  consequent 
readjustment  of  disturbed  dogmas,  the  enthusiasms 
and  responsibilities  entailed  in  the  enlargement  of 
national  dominions — all  these  things  were  re- 
flected, sometimes  directly,  sometimes  indirectly, 
in  the  poetry  of  the  time  ;  and  often  it  is  an  oblique 
or  indirect  reflection  that  shows  the  prevalent 
tenour  of  thought  most  clearly.  This  is,  indeed, 
the  characteristic  which  distinguishes  a  literary 
movement  from  a  literary  school.  A  school  of 

34 


SCHOOLS  AND  MOVEMENTS 

literature,  and  particularly  a  school  of  poetry,  is 
easy  enough  to  distinguish.  It  consists  of  a  domi- 
nant leader,  dictating  a  tone  and  attitude  to  a 
band  of  disciples  ;  the  band  may  be  numerous 
and  distinguished,  but  they  add  little  of  their  own 
to  the  example  of  their  master,  and  their  disciple- 
ship  is  practically  a  phase  of  euphuism.  But  a 
movement  is  another  thing  altogether.  In  a  move- 
ment there  may  be  many  and  diverse  spirits, 
suggesting  widely  different  solutions  to  the  same 
problem.  They  are  combined  only  in  their  interest 
in  the  same  aspect  of  thought  or  life,  and  in  a 
certain  harmony,  which  leads  them  indeed  to 
pursue  the  problem  towards  the  same  goal,  but 
not  necessarily  to  pursue  it  along  the  same  line. 
And  in  poetry  their  differences  may  seem,  at  first 
sight,  even  greater  than  their  similarities.  Differ- 
ence of  manner,  variety  of  method,  and  all  the 
changing  complications  due  to  metrical  innovation 
make  it  very  difficult  to  trace  with  accuracy  the 
by-ways  and  ramifications  of  a  poetical  movement. 
The  student  of  literary  movements,  in  short,  has 
to  be  careful  to  avoid  superficiality  ;  he  must  not 
be  too  ready  to  assume  that  men  who  are  alike 
in  manner  are  also  alike  in  spirit,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  dissimilarity  in  method  implies  neces- 
sarily antagonism  in  purpose.  The  whole  ground 
indeed  is  intersected  and  overrun  with  common 
rights  and  privileges,  and  the  very  inter-relation 
of  interests  is  among  the  most  fruitful  sources  of 
discussion. 

It  is  not  difficult,  however,  to  discern  certain 
main  tendencies,  and  to  the  study  of  these  we 
now  propose  to  direct  our  attention.  In  con- 
fining ourselves  to  these  we  must,  of  course, 

35 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

court  certain  disappointments  ;  for  some  of  the 
most  companionable  poets  of  the  period  cannot 
be  referred  to  any  particular  movement  at  all.  It 
can  hardly  be  maintained,  for  example,  that  the 
Victorian  era  has  been  marked  by  any  conspicuous 
movement  in  the  poetic  drama  :  and  the  dignified 
and  impressive  figure  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor  stands 
apart  from  an  estimate  which  is  concerned  with 
tendencies  rather  than  with  individuals.  In  the 
same  way  William  Barnes,  our  Victorian  Theo- 
critus, was  really  a  law  to  himself,  and  can  scarcely 
be  referred  to  any  definite  fellowship  of  poets. 
And  the  list  might  be  largely  increased,  including 
poets  of  a  transition  stage  no  less  than  those  who 
have  sustained  an  already  falling  note  ;  so  that 
many  honoured  names  must  necessarily  be  set 
aside  in  a  discussion  like  the  present.  Still  it  is 
remarkable  to  see  how  many  of  the  most  individual 
poets  of  the  time  are  clearly  representatives  of 
movements  ;  and  it  by  no  means  requires  too 
curious  an  inquiry  to  trace  their  inspiration  to 
its  fountain-head. 

The  period,  we  have  already  noticed,  was  one 
of  continual  change  and  intellectual  restlessness. 
It  was  marked  by  violent  enthusiasms  followed 
by  reactions  of  disappointment.  Political  move- 
ments such  as  the  Reform  Bill,  religious  revivals 
such  as  the  Oxford  Movement  and  the  Broad 
Church  humanism  of  Maurice  and  Kingsley, 
stirred  warm  anticipations  which  the  subsequent 
course  of  events  did  not  invariably  realize.  And 
behind  all  these,  the  slow  but  steady  advance  of 
science,  like  an  incoming  sea,  has  stealthily  swept 
away  old  land-marks.  The  time  was  one  of  spirit- 
ual anarchy,  of  the  gradual  breaking  up  of  old 

36 


THE  QUARTERLY  REVIEWS 

ideals,  and  of  the  difficult  settlement  of  new  con- 
clusions. Poetry  has  sometimes  withstood  the 
tide,  and  sometimes  gone  with  it ;  but  in  either 
case  it  has  been  affected,  and  radically  affected, 
by  the  current  of  thought.  And  in  its  own  turn  it 
has  had  to  meet  the  opposition  of  literary  criticism, 
and  this  very  opposition  has  tended  to  combine 
it  into  movements.  When  the  Quarterlies  were 
started,  in  the  early  years  of  the  century,  they 
were  started  for  the  precise  purpose  of  arresting 
what  seemed  to  their  founders  a  menacing  torrent 
of  innovation,  and  throughout  the  period  the 
criticism  which  they  represented  was  the  last  to 
abandon  the  citadel  of  convention.  Almost  every 
fresh  and  vital  movement  in  poetry  has  been 
opposed  by  the  responsible  organs  of  criticism  ; 
and  consequently  we  find  the  rather  strange  co- 
existence of  a  poetry  peculiarly  susceptible  to 
novel  influences,  side  by  side  with  a  criticism 
strenuously  directed  to  the  suppression  of  any- 
thing that  seems  to  threaten  innovation  or  revolt. 
The  natural  result  ensues.  Poetry  draws  its 
scattered  forces  closer  and  closer  together  ;  vary- 
ing spirits  combine  towards  the  same  end,  and 
the  poetical  movement  becomes  a  living  and 
accumulative  power. 

Victorian  poetry,  strictly  speaking,  began  to 
flower  a  few  years  before  the  historical  commence- 
ment of  the  Victorian  era.  The  field  had  been 
gradually  clearing  for  a  fresh  poetic  outburst. 
From  1822  to  the  close  of  his  life,  the  "  Ec- 
clesiastical Sonnets  "  and  "  Yarrow  Revisited  " 
were  Wordsworth's  only  important  publications. 
Coleridge  died  in  1834,  and  had  then  been  silent 
nine  years,  Samuel  Rogers's  last  great  poem 

37 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

"  Italy  "  appeared  as  far  back  as  1828.  In  1832 
Crabbe  and  Sir  Walter  Scott  both  died,  and  with 
them  two  distinct  poetic  movements  fell  for  a 
time  into  desuetude.  Southey  was  occupied  with 
more  congenial  prose,  and  Moore's  Irish  melodies 
were  exhausted.  Then  suddenly  in  1833  appeared 
two  little  volumes,  too  little  regarded,  which 
heralded  the  new  era.  Tennyson's  "  Poems  "  and 
Browning's  "  Pauline  "  were  published  within  a 
few  months  of  each  other,  and  with  them  Victor- 
ian poetry  may  be  said  to  have  put  forth  its  shoots. 
Thenceforward  for  more  than  fifty  years  English 
poetry  was  to  flourish  as  never  since  the  days  of 
Elizabeth.  These  two  periods,  indeed — the  Eliza- 
bethan and  the  Victorian — stand  out  in  sisterly 
companionship  of  brilliancy  in  the  whole  history 
of  English  poetry  ;  but  their  characters  are  widely 
different.  They  differ  both  in  the  ideal  which  they 
espoused,  and  in  the  difficulties  by  which  they 
were  let  and  hindered.  In  Elizabeth's  time  the 
concern  of  poetry  was  the  life  of  man  and  his 
relation  to  his  fellows  ;  in  the  Victorian  period 
it  was  the  soul  of  man  and  his  relation  to  his 
creator.  Differently  as  the  different  schools  have 
viewed  this  problem,  they  are  none  of  them  very 
far  removed  from  its  anxieties  ;  and,  whether 
they  issue  in  aspiration  and  faith,  in  reflection  and 
doubt,  in  emotion,  or  in  tired  reaction,  they  are 
alike  related  to  the  vast  expansion  of  ideas  which 
modern  science  has  forced  upon  the  intellectual 
world.  John  Stuart  Mill  said  of  Browning's 
"  Pauline  "  that  its  writer  possessed  a  deeper 
self-consciousness  than  he  had  ever  known  in  a 
sane  human  being,  and  it  was  just  this  self-con- 
sciousness, self-analysis,  or  self-concern  which 

38 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  VICTORIAN  AGE 

was  to  be  the  dominant  note  of  the  poetry  of  the 
time.  And  the  inevitable  outcome  of  this  self- 
concentration,  whether  it  found  effect  in  the 
introspective  seclusion  of  the  thinker,  or  in  the 
struggle  for  increased  influence  in  the  worker, 
was  a  succession  of  enthusiasms  and  ill-regarded 
aspirations  which  were  bound  to  dissolve  them- 
selves in  disappointment.  Movement  followed 
movement,  one  spiritual  impulse  gave  place  to 
another,  and  the  ideals  of  one  generation  became 
the  contempt  of  the  next. 

How  poetry  has  borne  itself  towards  this  turmoil 
of  contending  hopes  and  interests  we  hope  to  be 
able  to  trace  briefly  in  the  succeeding  articles. 
One  thing,  it  is  clear,  we  shall  not  expect  of  it. 
So  harrassed  and  impeded  by  false  cries  and 
broken  illusions,  its  makers  cannot  have  the  buoy- 
ancy, the  happiness,  and  fresh  sense  of  life  that 
lit  up  the  energy  of  their  Elizabethan  forerunners. 
Victorian  poetry  is  not  gay  ;  youth  and  the  spring 
morning  are  alike  over  and  done  with.  But  we 
shall  find  it  intensely  earnest,  even  in  reaction  ; 
sincere  in  its  striving  towards  a  still  inaccessible 
knowledge  : 

"  Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade." 

It  did  not,  at  any  rate,  shirk  the  difficulties  by 
which  it  was  beset ;  and  if  at  its  close,  after 
long  and  honourable  effort,  it  seemed  for  a  moment 
exhausted,  the  interval  has  proved  that  it  was  only 
gathering  itself  together  for  fresh  activities  on 
the  morrow.  For  one  advantage  which  we  derive 
from  the  study  of  poetic  movements  is  this  ; 
we  perceive  with  increasing  certainty  that  the 

*     39 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

chain  of  intellectual  vigour  is  unbroken,  and  that 
the  continuity  of  poetry  and  the  poetical  spirit  is 
perpetual.  And  even  in  so  partial  a  study  as  the 
present  we  ought  to  be  able  to  suggest,  however 
inadequately,  the  way  in  which  all  true  poetry, 
in  spite  of  superficial  discrepancies  and  apparent 
antagonisms,  is  really  and  indissolubly  related. 
That,  at  least,  is  the  object  of  the  survey,  be  its 
shortcomings  what  they  must. 

II. — THE  POETRY  OF  FAITH  AND  ASPIRATION 

The  Victorian  era  was,  as  we  have  seen,  broken 
up  into  numerous  and  conflicting  movements, 
and  at  first  sight  the  interests  and  expectations 
which  they  arouse  seem  scarcely  reconcilable. 
But,  upon  closer  examination,  it  will  be  found 
that  all  these  diverse  enthusiasms  are  related  and 
very  closely  related  to  two  main  distinguishing 
characteristics  of  the  epoch,  two  waves  that 
steadily  advance  until  they  fill  and  flood,  as  it 
were,  all  the  creeks  and  inlets  of  contemporary 
thought.  The  advance  of  science  and  the  advance 
of  the  democratic  spirit — the  one  widening  the 
intellectual  horizon  and  illuminating  every  sort 
of  hidden  corner  of  tradition  and  authority,  the 
other  breathing  energy  and  ambition  into  the 
dry  bones  of  an  inert  and  decadent  section  of 
society — these  two  great  movements  of  emanci- 
pation either  absorb  or  direct  all  the  other  in- 
terests of  the  period.  The  spirits  which  are  frankly 
revolutionary,  openly  in  antagonism  with  tradi- 
tion and  authority,  they  absorb  ;  those  which  are 
jealous  of  old  forms  and  loyalties  they  cannot 
indeed  absorb,  but  they  still  direct  them,  turning 
40 


THE  THEORY  OF  EVOLUTION 

the  course  of  their  thought,  and  forcing  them  at 
least  to  weigh,  and  in  their  degree  to  recognize, 
claims  which  had  never  before  entered  into  the 
serious  consideration  of  literature  and  life. 

And  of  all  scientific  systems  the  one  most 
characteristic  of  the  period  is,  of  course,  that  of 
Evolution.  The  Victorian  era  was  indeed  well 
advanced  before  Charles  Darwin  set  forth  in 
"  The  Origin  of  Species  "  what  may  be  called 
the  first  modern  evangel  of  Evolution,  but  the 
ideas  which  he  there  crystallized  had  long  been 
in  the  air,  and  their  gradual  growth  may  be  traced 
in  the  spiritual,  no  less  than  in  the  scientific, 
literature  of  the  time.  And  side  by  side  with  this 
theory  of  physical  derivation  and  interrelation, 
this  doctrine  (one  might  almost  call  it)  of  universal 
brotherhood,  there  was  steadily  growing  a  new 
principle  of  individual  emancipation  and  liberty, 
fostered  in  literature  by  the  careless,  happy 
optimism  of  Macaulay  on  the  one  side,  and  on 
the  other  by  John  Stuart  Mill's  emphatic,  earnest 
doctrine  of  utilitarianism.  The  Reform  Bill  of 
1832  promised  an  enlargement  of  interests  that 
seemed  to  lead  into  an  indefinite  millennium ;  the 
people  was  at  last  to  get  its  own ;  thought  was  free ; 
and  the  old  order  overwhelmed.  Under  two  such 
towering  waves  it  was  natural  that  much  of  the 
old  faith  and  aspiration  should  go  down  :  natural, 
too,  that  some  resistance  should  be  made,  and 
some  attempt  to  reconcile  the  prevailing  theory 
with  the  earlier  and  still,  happily,  current  belief. 
The  natural  attitude  of  man  is  not  so  much  one 
of  revolt  as  of  compromise  ;  and  the  character- 
istic attitude  towards  innovation  is  one  of  tem- 
perate reconciliation.  And  so  it  is  not  surprising 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

to  find  that  the  most  prominent  and  distinctive 
poetry  of  the  epoch  is  that  in  which  the  theory  of 
evolution  is  implicit,  in  which  some  of  its  coroll- 
aries are  deliberately  accepted,  but  which,  at  the 
same  time,  accepts  them  almost  unconsciously, 
and  directs  its  whole  endeavour  to  the  raising  of 
man's  ideals  above  the  material  sphere  of  interest, 
permeating  the  material  world  with  spiritual 
significance.  This  is  what  we  call  the  poetry  of 
Faith  and  Aspiration,  and  we  find  it,  sustained 
by  the  fortunate  longevity  of  its  leaders,  the  most 
continuous  and  characteristic  movement  of  the 
age. 

But  here  at  the  outset  we  must  discriminate, 
for  this  representative  phase  of  poetry  is  not  to 
be  confused  with  purely  religious  or  devotional 
poetry,  strong  and  fruitful  as  that  "  tree  of  life  " 
has  proved  during  the  period  under  discussion. 
Keble's  sensitive  and  often  exquisite  reflection, 
and  Christina  Rossetti's  almost  liturgical  fervour, 
are  too  unquestioning  in  their  spiritual  devotion, 
too  direct  in  their  confident  appeal,  to  be  affected 
by  current  thought  in  the  way  in  which  truly 
representative  poetry  is  affected.  These  are,  on 
the  contrary,  examples  of  that  divine  and  placid 
insensibility  to  outside  interests  which  dignifies 
the  monk  in  his  cell  or  the  priest  before  the  altar  ; 
they  are  altogether  part  of  the  worship  of  God, 
unstained  by  the  touch  of  man.  But  the  poetry 
which  comes  from  spiritual  anxiety,  conceived 
in  the  very  intensity  of  contemporary  interest,  is 
another  thing  entirely  ;  and  of  this  the  period 
affords  us  three  eminent  examples,  singularly 
different  both  in  scope  and  method,  so  different, 
indeed,  as  to  seem  at  first  sight  completely  diverse, 
42 


TENNYSON,  BROWNING,  AND  PATMORE 

and  yet  all  closely  united  in  faith  in  the  progress 
of  man,  and  in  that  continuity  of  spiritual  energy 
which  postulates  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

Tennyson,  Browning,  and  Coventry  Patmore 
— it  would  be  difficult  to  choose  three  contem- 
porary names  suggesting  more  various  and  diver- 
gent trains  of  thought.  In  method  they  are  alto- 
gether dissimilar.  Tennyson's  exquisite  lyricism 
is  as  unlike  Browning's  rugged  but  penetrating 
bursts  of  music  as  both  are  to  the  elaborately 
constructed,  cumulative  harmonies  of  Patmore 's 
full-toned  odes.  Nor  do  they  differ  less  in  per- 
sonality. Tennyson  is  eminently  social,  almost 
universal  in  sympathy  ;  the  progress  and  life  of 
the  people  is  his  perpetual  theme,  even  his  intimate 
poems  end  on  an  impersonal  note.  Browning,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  concerned  exclusively  with  the 
individual  soul  as  the  microcosm,  dissecting  and 
analysing  the  motive,  probing  the  personality,  and 
arguing  from  the  single  example  to  the  generaliza- 
tion .  Finally , Patmore  is  self-centred ,  introspective ; 
by  far  the  most  self-conscious  of  the  three,  and 
by  far  the  narrowest  in  interest ;  and  yet  rising  on 
the  wings  of  self-realization  to  heights  of  spiritual 
ecstasy  sublimely  unclouded  by  controversy. 
These  are  widely  different  natures  indeed  ;  and 
yet  they  are  closely  related  in  a  brotherhood  of 
purpose.  And  first,  let  us  consider  them  with 
relation  to  the  dominant  theory  of  evolution. 

For  evolution,  as  a  scientific  theory,  Tennyson 
entertained  apprehensions,  not  for  its  own  sake, 
but  for  the  difficulties  which  accompany  it  in  the 
common  mind.  The  thoughtless  man  would 
make  it  a  stumbling  block,  while  to  the  intelligent 
it  should  be  a  "  sounding  watchword." 

43 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

Evolution  ever  climbing  after  some  ideal  good, 
And  Reversion  ever  dragging  Evolution  in  the  mud. 

****** 

Many  an  JEon  moulded  earth  before  her  highest,  man 

was  born. 
Many  an  JEon  too  may  pass  when  earth  is  manless  and 

forlorn, 

Only  that  which  made  us  meant  us  to  be  mightier  by 

and  by, 
Set  the  sphere  of  all  the  boundless  Heavens  within  the 

human  eye, 

Sent  the  shadow  of  Himself,  the  boundless,  thro'  the 

human  soul, 
Boundless  inward,  in  the  atom,  boundless  outward,  in 

the  whole." 

The  theory,  he  saw,  was  capable  of  infinite 
spiritual  expansion  ;  its  danger  was  that,  confined 
to  the  material  sphere,  it  might  lose  all  spiritual 
significance  and  stifle  human  ambition.  So,  with 
a  really  wonderful  adroitness,  he  fitted  it  into  his 
scheme  till  it  became  its  inseparable  part  and 
parcel.  To  Tennyson  the  secret  of  the  world  was 
the  law  of  order,  the  gradual  progress  by  steps 
of  slow  improvement ;  and  into  this  theory  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  very  naturally  fitted.  "  I 
believe  in  progress,"  he  said  once,  "  but  a  pro- 
gress conserving  the  hopes  of  man  "  ;  and,  as 
Professor  Dowden  has  very  pertinently  pointed 
out,  the  whole  fabric  of  his  philosophy  is  sym- 
bolized in  the  decoration  of  Merlin's  Hall  in 
"  The  Holy  Grail."  For 

"  Four  great  zones  of  sculpture,  set  betwixt 
With  many  a  mystic  symbol,  gird  the  hall : 
And  in  the  lowest  beasts  are  slaying  men, 
And  in  the  second  men  are  slaying  beasts, 

44 


BROWNING'S  INDIVIDUALISM 

And  on  the  third  are  warriors,  perfect  men, 
And  on  the  fourth  are  men  with  growing  wings, 
And  over  all  one  statue  in  the  mould 
Of  Arthur,  made  by  Merlin,  with  a  crown, 
And  peak'd  wings  pointed  to  the  Northern  Star." 

Here,  in  a  picture,  is  the  whole  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, beginning  in  the  material  world,  rising  to 
the  spiritual,  and  sublimated  by  a  suggestion  of 
divine  perfectibility.  The  race  is  gradually  to 
grow  in  grace,  rising  on  stepping  stones  of  its 
dead  self  to  higher  things. 

Browning's  interest,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not 
so  much  with  the  race  as  with  the  individual,  nor 
so  much  with  order  as  with  self-realization.  It  is 
a  natural  sequel  of  Tennyson's  sense  of  orderly 
progress  that  the  individual  must  be  subjected 
to  the  interests  of  the  race,  his  passions  and 
enthusiasms  merged  into  the  general  paean  of 
hope  and  aspiration.  But  Browning's  claim  is  for 
the  individual  altogether.  He  must  realize  himself, 
growing  into  shape  like  clay  upon  the  potter's 
wheel. 

"  Ay,  note  that  Potter's  wheel, 
That  metaphor  !  and  feel 

Why  time  spins  fast,  why  passive  lies  our  clay, — 
Thou,  to  whom  fools  propound, 
When  the  wine  makes  its  round, 
'  Since  life  fleets,  all  is  change  ;  the  Past  gone,  seize 
to-day  ! ' 

"  Fool  !  all  that  is,  at  all, 
Lasts  ever,  past  recall ; 

Earth  changes,  but  thy  soul  and  God  stand  sure  ; 
What  entered  into  thee, 
That  was,  is,  and  shall  be  ; 

Time's  wheel  runs  back  or  stops  :  Potter  and  clay 
endure." 

45 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

Here  again  is,  implicitly,  the  evolutionary  doc- 
trine, but  applied  now  directly  to  the  individual. 
Even  more  directly  we  find  it  in  "  Evelyn  Hope." 

"  No,  indeed  !  for  God  above 

Is  great  to  grant,  as  mighty  to  make, 
And  creates  the  love  to  reward  the  love  ; 
I  claim  you  still,  for  my  own  love's  sake  : 
Delayed  it  may  be  for  more  lives  yet, 
Through  worlds  I  shall  traverse,  not  a  few  : 
Much  is  to  learn,  much  to  forget 
Ere  the  time  be  come  for  taking  you." 

Had  we  space,  instances  might,  of  course,  be 
multiplied  indefinitely,  but  we  have  already 
enough  to  indicate  the  main  tendency,  and  its 
distinguishing  difference.  The  human  soul,  using 
its  life  here  as  a  palaestra  or  exercising  ground  of 
the  faculties  and  emotions,  is  hereafter  to  grow 
and  flower  till  it  comes  to  the  measure  of  the 
perfect  man.  And  to  this  end  no  faculty  must  be 
neglected,  no  healthful  emotion  unexercised ; 
the  perfection  of  nature  will  be  the  harmony  of  all. 
In  Patmore  we  find  a  rather  different  inter- 
pretation. He  is,  as  we  have  said,  by  far  the  most 
self-conscious  of  our  three  poets,  and  his  natural 
tendency  to  introspection  was  fostered  by  his 
adoption  of  that  form  of  the  Christian  religion 
which  most  encourages  self-analysis  and  self- 
judgment.  From  that  religion,  too,  he  gathered 
its  most  beautiful  and  inspiring  motive — the 
sense  of  the  universality  of  the  divine  Love, 
which  he  developed  into  a  sort  of  pantheism  of 
the  affections, seeing  Love  everywhere  in  God, and 
God  everywhere  in  Love.  With  him  the  human 
passions  have  full  sway,  as  being  manifestations 
of  the  divine  order ;  and  it  is  in  moments 
46 


FAITH  AND  PANTHEISM 


irradiated  by  the  ecstasy  of  love  that  the  poet  feels 
himself  closest  to  the  God  whose  very  name  is 
Love  itself.  Here,  too,  though  scientific  theories 
are  as  far  as  possible  from  the  poet's  interest,  the 
sense  of  evolutionary  development  is  faintly 
perceived  and  recognised,  as  indeed  it  has  always 
been  recognised,  in  the  Christian  religion  pro- 
perly understood. 

"  I,  trusting  that  the  truly  sweet 
Would  still  be  sweetly  found  the  true, 
Sang,  darkling,  taught  by  heavenly  heat, 
Songs  which  were  wiser  than  I  knew. 
To  the  unintelligible  dream 
That  melted  like  a  gliding  star, 
I  said  '  We  part  to  meet,  fair  gleam  ! 
You  are  eternal,  for  you  are" 

And  then,  as  regards  the  great  democratic 
movement,  the  advance  of  the  influence  of  the 
mob — here,  too,  we  find  the  three  poets  in  diverse 
agreement.  We  will  take  Patmore  first,  as  being 
naturally  most  estranged  by  it. 

"  Lo,  weary  of  the  greatness  of  her  ways, 

There  lies  my  Land,  with  hasty  pulse  and  hard, 

Her  ancient  beauty  marr'd, 

And,  in  her  cold  and  aimless  roving  sight, 

Horror  of  light ; 

Sole  vigour  left  in  her  last  lethargy, 

Save  when,  at  bidding  of  some  dreadful  breath, 

The  rising  death 

Rolls  up  with  force  ; 

And  then  the  furiously  gibbering  corse 

Shakes,  panglessly  convuls'd,  and  sightless  stares, 

Whilst  one  Physician  pours  in  rousing  wines, 

One  anodynes, 

And  one  declares 

That  nothing  ails  it  but  the  pains  of  growth. 

47 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

My  last  look  loth 

Is  taken  ;  and  I  turn  with  the  relief 

Of  knowing  that  my  life-long  hope  and  grief 

Are  surely  vain, 

To  that  unshapen  time  to  come,  when  She 

A  dim  heroic  Nation  long  since  dead, 

The  foulness  of  her  agony  forgot, 

Shall  all  benignly  shed 

Through  ages  vast 

The  ghostly  grace  of  her  transfigured  past 

Over  the  present,  harass'd  and  forlorn, 

Of  nations  yet  unborn." 

This  is  apparent  pessimism  ;  but  at  the  close 
the  depression  is  relieved  by  hope,  by  the  sense 
of  the  evolution  of  national  history,  and  of  the 
permanent  influence  of  English  character  and 
ideal.  Tennyson,  too,  felt  the  dangers  of  democ- 
racy, and  was  often  gravely  depressed  by  it,  but 
he, too, and  much  more  emphatically  than  Patmore, 
ended  in  confidence  in  the  progress  of  the  human 
race. 

"  Light  the  fading  gleam  of  Even  ?  light  the  glimmer 
of  the  dawn  ? 

Aged  eyes  may  take  the  growing  glimmer  for  the 
gleam  withdrawn. 

Follow  Light  and  do  the  Right  for  man  can  half  con- 
trol his  doom — 

Till  you  find  the  deathless  Angel  seated  in  the  vacant 
tomb." 

And  Browning,  indomitable  optimist,  was  still 
more  confident.  For  this  is  his  picture  of  himself. 

"  One  who  never  turned  his  back,  but  marched  breast 

forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong 

would  triumph, 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  CONFIDENCE 

Held,  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake." 

And  if  of  these  three  voices  Browning's  seems 
the  only  one  unquestioningly  confident,  it  is 
well  to  remember,  as  we  have  already  tried  to 
indicate,  that  the  period  through  which  these 
three  poets  moved  into  honoured  age  was  one  of 
more  than  ordinary  expectation  and  disappoint- 
ment. The  popular  ideals  of  the  forties  and  the 
fifties  are  already  withered  and  laid  aside  ;  and 
these  men,  who  saw  the  era  set  out  with  such 
high  hopes,  may  well  have  been  given  pause  by 
its  failure  to  realize  their  promises.  And  there 
were  moments  when  they  all — yes  even  Brown- 
ing— were  depressed  by  the  course  of  events,  and 
uncertain  whether  the  spiritual  future  of  the 
nation  was  not  to  drift  upon  the  rocks.  Neverthe- 
less they  emerged  in  confidence.  They  were  con- 
fident in  the  permanence  of  those  ideals  which 
had  been  proved  in  the  past,  confident,  too,  of 
the  survival  of  spiritual  energy,  and  of  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul.  In  this,  of  course,  they  were 
by  no  means  alone  ;  the  poetry  of  their  time  was 
rich  in  high  aspiration  and  in  fidelity  to  old  ideals  ; 
it  is  rich  in  the  same  qualities  to-day.  But  these 
three,  in  very  different  ways,  are  representatives 
of  three  great  classes  of  the  enthusiastic  :  of  those 
who  believe  primarily  in  order  and  restraint,  of 
those  who  rely  rather  upon  energy  and  individu- 
ality, and  of  those  who  merge  all  action  in  fidelity 
to  a  formal  but  humanizing  faith.  And  of  their 
representative  value  and  formative  influence,  we 
shall  be  able  to  judge  more  clearly  when  we  come 
to  consider  some  of  the  other  poetical  movements 
and  spiritual  distractions  of  their  day. 

49  * 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

III. — THE  POETRY  OF  REFLECTION  AND  DOUBT. 

The  intellectual  and  poetic  movement  which 
we  have  now  to  consider  is  of  peculiar  interest, 
since  it  differs  in  one  radical  and  essential  respect 
from  almost  all  the  other  developments  of  the 
period.  Movements,  whether  political  or  literary, 
are  as  a  rule,  it  seems  almost  unnecessary  to  say, 
inspired  by  some  common  enthusiasm  either 
constructive  or  destructive,  and  are  directed 
towards  the  achievement  of  some  positive  aim, 
or  the  support  of  some  definite  and  stimulating 
ideal.  And  this  is  true  not  only  of  movements  of 
advance,  but  also  of  movements  of  retreat ;  re- 
action itself  is  addressed  to  the  amelioration  of 
some  fixed  and  appreciated  wrong,  and  it  is  as 
easy  to  trace  the  point  upon  which  the  retreat  is 
based  as  that  to  which  the  preceding  advance 
was  directed.  But  the  intellectual  and  poetic 
movement  which  now  comes  under  our  consider- 
ation is  one  neither  of  action  nor  of  reaction  ;  its 
attitude  is  essentially  hesitating  and  undefined. 
It  stands  midway  between  spiritual  confidence, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  scepticism  or  resignation, 
on  the  other  ;  it  resigns  much,  without  resigning 
all,  and  it  is  left  uncertain  of  its  own  bearings, 
halting  between  two  opinions,  reflective,  doubtful. 

And  its  interest  and  importance  are  very  much 
increased  by  the  fact  that,  while  it  is  representa- 
tive of  a  contemporary  tendency  very  wide-spread 
and  penetrating,  the  expression  of  that  tendency 
is  confined,  and  inevitably  confined,  to  a  very 
narrow  area  indeed.  The  tendency,  we  say,  is 
widespread,  because  the  natural  attitude  of  the 
reflective  man  towards  current  enthusiasms  is 

5° 


CLOUGH  AND  ARNOLD 


one  of  hesitancy  and  dissection  ;  and  yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  expression  of  such  hesitancy  in 
literature,  or  at  any  rate  in  poetry,  is  rare  ;  since 
the  art  of  literary  expression  invites  enthusiasms, 
and  prospers  under  their  influence,  while  it 
withers  and  desiccates  under  the  spirit  of  indecis- 
ion. In  the  present  movement,  which  we  call  the 
Poetry  of  Reflection  and  Doubt,  two  names  only 
stand  out  conspicuously,  representing  two  atti- 
tudes, divergent  but  allied,  towards  the  spiritual 
aspirations  of  their  day  ;  and  in  the  poetry  of 
Matthew  Arnold  and  Arthur  Hugh  Clough  we 
may  trace  the  quintessence  of  an  intellectual 
movement  which  is  actually  spreading  at  the 
present  time  far  more  widely  than  it  spread  in 
their  own,  and  which  is  continually  re-echoed, 
without  much  helpful  addition,  in  the  "  minor  " 
verse  of  the  younger  generation.  This  movement 
has,  therefore,  an  unusual  interest  for  the  student 
of  tendencies,  since  it  is  inextricably  bound  up 
with  the  advance  of  culture  during  the  last  fifty 
years,  and  with  the  influence  of  that  reverend 
University,  whose  sound  continues  to  go  out  into 
all  lands,  as  her  sons  increase  in  number  and 
achievement.  This  is,  indeed,  the  Oxford  move- 
ment in  poetry  ;  and  it  follows,  no  less  certainly 
than  it  reacts  from,  that  other  great  Oxford  move- 
ment, whose  beautiful  and  increasing  influence 
to-day  testifies  to  the  integrity  and  strength  upon 
which  it  was  founded. 

"  There  were  voices  in  the  air  when  I  was  at 
Oxford,"  said  Arnold,  and  they  were  voices  of 
great  persuasiveness  and  charm.  It  is  only  when 
we  consider  the  apathy  into  which  the  services 
of  the  Church  had  fallen  towards  the  close  of  the 

5' 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

eighteenth  century,  when  we  recall  the  divorce 
from  beauty  which  had  extended  itself  throughout 
the  forms  of  public  worship,  that  we  can  form  any 
idea  of  the  sudden  warmth  and  energy  which  that 
movement  instilled  into  the  religion  of  the 
country.  Nor  was  the  revival  one  of  form  alone, 
or  even  of  form  in  the  first  place.  The  outward 
symbols  of  beauty,  restored  from  the  unbroken 
traditions  of  the  past,  were  designed,  of  course, 
to  direct  the  mind  towards  the  eternal  ideas  which 
they  represented  ;  the  spirit  was  one  of  unity, 
cohesion,  and  authority.  Above  all  things  it  was 
a  spirit  of  authority.  The  dominant  position  of 
the  Church  as  mistress  of  her  own  was  to  be 
reasserted  with  every  emphasis  ;  her  power  of 
self-government  in  the  spiritual  sphere  was  to  be 
vindicated  at  any  cost.  Yes,  "  there  were  voices 
in  the  air  at  Oxford,"  voices  of  beauty  and  winning 
grace  like  those  of  Newman  and  Pusey,  voices 
of  decision  and  energy  like  those  of  Hurrell 
Froude  and  W.  G.  Ward  ;  and  it  is  not  surprising 
that  they  carried  men  along  with  them.  Still, 
even  from  such  beneficent  and  spiritual  influences 
there  could  not  but  be  reaction  ;  and  when  it  fol- 
lowed that  opposition  and  dissension  split  the  ranks 
and  separated  the  brotherhood,  it  was  inevitable 
that  questionings  and  hesitancies  should  arise. 
Newman  was  lost  to  the  Anglican  fraternity,  and 
with  his  secession  the  whole  movement  was 
exposed  to  misunderstanding  and  misrepresent- 
ation. Storms  began  to  beat  against  the  citadel,  and 
in  the  minds  of  the  reflective  the  natural  question 
formed  itself,  unanswered — at  least  to  their  satis- 
faction— "  You  talk  to  us  of  authority,  but  where 
is  your  authority  grounded  ?  Even  yourselves, 

52 


THE  SCEPTICISM  OF  CLOUGH 

it  seems,  are  divided  upon  its  claims.  Is  there, 
after  all,  any  authority  that  is  impregnable?" 

Then  again,  and  with  a  different  import,  there 
were  voices  in  the  air  at  Oxford,  voices  of  "  men 
contention-tost."  Arthur  Hugh  Clough,  who  had 
at  first  followed  the  Tractarians,  "  like  a  straw,"  as 
he  himself  said,  "  drawn  by  the  wind,"  was  among 
the  first  to  break  with  their  influence.  But  their 
parting  was  a  parting  of  friends.  There  is  nothing 
of  revolt  or  of  violent  separation  in  that  breaking 
up  of  association  which  inspired  the  Oxford 
poetic  movement ;  and,  in  bidding  farewell  to 
his  friend  Ward,  Clough  did  so  with  a  breadth  of 
outlook  full  of  hope  in  the  future. 

"  But  O  blithe  breeze  ;  and  O  great  seas, 

Though  ne'er,  that  earliest  parting  past, 
On  your  wide  plain  they  join  again, 
Together  lead  them  home  at  last. 

One  port,  methought,  alike  they  sought, 
One  purpose  hold,  where'er  they  fare, — 

O  bounding  breeze,  O  rushing  seas  ! 
At  last,  at  last  unite  them  there  ! " 

This  is  certainly  not  the  poetry  of  scepticism, 
and  Clough 's  position  with  regard  to  the  central 
movement  of  spiritual  ideas  has  been  often  mis- 
judged by  the  thoughtless.  His  nature  was,  in 
fact,  one  of  singular  candour,  "  of  Homeric 
simplicity,"  as  Arnold  described  it,  and  he  could 
tolerate  in  himself  no  compromise  with  insincerity. 
No  "  light  half-believer  of  a  casual  creed,"  he 
was  unable  to  reconcile  himself  to  the  authority 
of  religion,  but  it  was  no  part  of  his  intention  to 
wage  war  on  that  account  against  those  who  could. 
His  whole  attitude  to  life  was  warm  and  genial. 
He  loved  the  open  air  and  the  healthy  life  ;  he 

53 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

was  rich  in  enthusiasm  for  the  aspirations  of  his 
fellow-men;  and  if  he  chose  to  be  a  law  to  himself, 
he  was  at  any  rate  content  to  keep  that  law  in 
strenuous  and  virile  obedience. 

"  Come  back  again,  my  olden  heart, 

I  said,  Behold,  I  perish  quite, 
Unless  to  give  me  strength  to  start, 

I  make  myself  my  rule  of  right : 
It  must  be,  if  I  act  at  all, 
To  save  my  shame  I  have  at  call 
The  plea  of  all  men  understood, — 
Because  I  willed  it,  it  is  good. 

Come  back  again,  old  heart  !    Ah  me  ! 

Methinks  in  those  thy  coward  fears 
There  might,  perchance,  a  courage  be, 

That  fails  in  these  the  manlier  years  ; 
Courage  to  let  the  courage  sink, 
Itself  a  coward  base  to  think, 
Rather  than  not  for  heavenly  light, 
Wait  on  to  show  the  truly  right." 

Clough's  was  a  downright  emphatic  nature — 
typical  of  many  natures  that  Oxford  sends  out 
to  do  her  good  work  outside  her  walls — and  he 
expressed  himself  in  downright,  emphatic  fashion. 
Technically  he  is  as  far  as  possible  from  the  acad- 
emic ideal,  either  in  matter  or  in  manner.  In 
style,  indeed,  he  is  retrograde  ;  and  even  the 
breezy,  bounding  hexameters,  which  his  friend 
Arnold  so  cordially  admired,  are  rather  turbulent 
and  compelling  than  musically  persuasive.  But 
there  is  something  particularly  winning,  friendly, 
and  companionable  in  Clough's  sincere  and 
manly  isolation  from  that  current  spiritual  move- 
ment which,  could  he  have  gone  with  it,  he  would 
have  himself  so  helpfully  adorned.  His  abnega- 

54 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  ARNOLD 

tion  of  it  is  remote  from  all  pose  or  trick  of  singu- 
larity ;  it  is  centred  in  a  spirit  that  is  at  one  with 
itself,  and  open  to  the  world,  lending  a  fresh  and 
emphatic  meaning  to  Tennyson's  familiar  and 
often  perverted  sentiment : 

"  There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds." 

When  we  turn  to  Arnold  we  find  ourselves 
face  to  face  with  a  very  different  temperament 
and  a  different  art.  In  poetic  technique  Arnold 
possessed  almost  all  the  qualities  which  Clough 
lacked,  and  his  workmanship — deliberate  and 
exquisite — is  of  the  highest  order  of  literary  finish. 
His  detractors,  in  saying  their  worst,  could  only 
say  that  he  is  an  academic  poet  in  excelsis  ;  his 
admirers,  a  body  which  probably  now  includes 
all  who  are  qualified  to  judge  of  poetic  excellence 
at  all,  would  justly  maintain  that  the  classic  spirit 
which  Oxford  lives  to  keep  alight  has  here  taken 
to  itself  fresh  fuel,  and  combined  classicism  with 
modernity  "  on  one  far  height  in  one  far  shining 
fire."  The  little  that  can  be  said  against  Arnold's 
method  may  be  said  in  very  few  words.  It  is  per- 
haps arguable  that  the  classic  convention  led  him 
on  occasion  into  over-elaborate  assumption  of  the 
poetic  attitude.  Some  of  the  similes  in  his  longer 
poems  are  beaten  out  beyond  the  limits  of 
similitude,  and  present  the  appearance  rather  of 
excrescences  than  of  illustrations.  There  was, 
further,  a  slight  tendency  to  overwork  the  dignity 
of  classic  allusion  ;  and,  as  in  that  fine  picture  of 
the  Sicilian  shepherds  in  "  Thyrsis,"  to  heap 
suggestion  upon  suggestion  until  the  poem  was 
only  with  difficulty  drawn  back  to  its  English 

55 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

atmosphere,  and  the  very  return  to  the  main 
theme  was  affected  with  a  sense  of  violent  trans- 
ition. These  trifling  foibles  gave  his  work  an 
occasional  air  of  mannerism,  to  which  some  critics, 
unacquainted,  perhaps,  with  the  source  of  the 
illustrations  and  the  traditions  which  they  sought 
to  maintain,  have  not  been  slow  to  take  exception. 
But  this  said,  and  said  with  all  due  reserve,  there 
remains  nothing  but  admiration  for  Arnold's 
exquisite  manner,  and  for  the  delicate  felicity 
with  which  he  elaborates  and  contrasts  effects, 
whether  pictorial  or  emotional,  in  language  which 
seems  almost  infallibly  at  his  command.  He  sus- 
tains the  highest  traditions  of  reflective  and 
analytic  poetry,  and  adds  to  the  tradition  just 
enough  of  modern  use  and  spirit  to  make  his 
medium  recognizable  as  his  own. 

In  all  this  he  is  entirely  different  from  Clough, 
and  he  differs  from  him  just  as  radically  in  tem- 
perament. The  cheery  vigour,  the  modulated 
optimism,  springing  like  a  fountain  in  Clough 
against  the  intervention  of  depression,  these  have 
no  part  in  Arnold's  composition. 

"  Say  not  the  struggle  naught  availeth," 

cries  the  one  ;  but  to  the  other  the  struggle, 
manfully  and  determinedly  as  it  is  undertaken, 
seems  always  to  be  leading  into  failure  and 
oblivion.  "  Thou  waitest,"  he  says  to  his  scholar- 
gipsy  : 

"  Thou  waitest  for  the  spark  from  heaven  !  and  we, 
Light  half-believers  of  our  casual  creeds, 
Who  never  deeply  felt,  nor  clearly  willed, 
Whose  insight  never  has  borne  fruit  in  deeds, 
Whose  vague  resolves  never  have  been  fulfilled  ; 

56 


ARNOLD'S  MELANCHOLY 


For  whom  each  year  we  see 

Breeds  new  beginnings,  disappointments  new ; 
Who  hesitate  and  falter  life  away, 
And  lose  to-morrow  the  ground  won  to-day — 

Ah  !  do  not  we,  wanderer  !  await  it  too  ? 

Yes,  we  await  it  ! — but  it  still  delays, 
And  then  we  suffer  !  " 

This  sense  of  unsatisfied  expectation  is  of  the 
essence  of  his  poetry. 

Arnold's  life  was,  perhaps,  disposed  to  this  sort 
of  melancholy,  for  he  was  thrown  much  among 
the  less-educated  and  less-aspiring  classes  of  the 
community  ;  and  in  them,  not  unnaturally,  he 
seemed  to  see  the  failure  of  the  high  ideals  which 
were  agitating  the  great  centres  of  culture.  "  We 
strive,"  he  might  say,  "  we  aspire.  These  new 
and  exquisite  loyalties  seem  so  inspiriting  and 
effectual  to  ourselves,  but  look  at  the  majority  of 
our  fellow-creatures.  What  does  all  our  intellectual 
effort  do  for  them  ?  " 

"  What  is  the  course  of  the  life 
Of  mortal  men  on  the  earth  ? 
Most  men  eddy  about 
Here  and  there — eat  and  drink, 
Chatter  and  love  and  hate, 
Gather  and  squander,  are  raised 
Aloft,  are  hurl'd  in  the  dust, 
Striving  blindly,  achieving 
Nothing." 

And  then,  to  console  themselves  for  a  purpose- 
less and  effortless  existence  here,  they  promise 
themselves  every  form  of  material  and  spiritual 
satisfaction,  "  hereafter  in  a  better  world  than 
this."  This  was  the  self-satisfied,  smug  doctrine  of 
compensation  which  Arnold  could  not  away  with. 

57 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

"  Foil'd  by  our  fellow-men,  depressed,  outworn, 
We  leave  the  brutal  world  to  take  its  way, 
And,  Patience  !  in  another  life,  we  say, 
The  world  shall  be  thrust  down,  and  we  up-borne. 

And  will  not,  then,  the  immortal  armies  scorn 
The  world's  poor,  routed  leavings  ?  or  will  they, 
Who  failed  under  the  heat  of  this  life's  day, 
Support  the  fervours  of  the  heavenly  morn  ? 

No,  no  !  The  energy  of  life  may  be 
Kept  on  after  the  grave,  but  not  begun  ; 
And  he  who  flagg'd  not  in  the  earthly  strife, 
From  strength  to  strength  advancing — only  he, 
His  soul  well-knit,  and  all  his  battles  won, 
Mounts,  and  that  hardly,  to  eternal  life." 

The  mere  recital  of  that  noble  sonnet  would 
serve  to  remind  us,  if  indeed  we  needed  such 
reminder,  that  Arnold's  dissatisfaction  with 
existing  conditions  of  life  and  faith  would  by  no 
means  lose  the  name  of  action.  His  melancholy, 
of  which  perhaps  criticism  has  always  made 
enough  and  to  spare,  was  no  anaemic  plaint  of  a 
spoilt  child  of  fortune  ;  and  in  purpose,  if  not  in 
expression  of  purpose,  he  and  Clough  were  close- 
knit  brothers.  The  difference  was  that  each  saw, 
as  it  were,  one  aspect  of  the  disease  of  life,  and 
each  prescribed  one  remedy.  To  Clough  the 
compensating  joy  lay  in  the  life  of  humanity  ;  to 
Arnold  the  anodyne  was  the  life  of  ideas. 

"  Sit,  if  ye  will,  sit  down  upon  the  ground." 
says  Clough, 

"  Yet  not  to  weep  and  wail,  but  calmly  look  around. 
Whate'er  befell, 
Earth  is  not  hell ; 

58 


OXFORD'S  GREAT  TWIN-BRETHREN 

Now,  too,  as  when  it  first  began, 
Life  is  yet  life,  and  man  is  man. 
For  all  that  breathe  beneath  the  heaven's  high 

cope, 

Joy  with  grief  mixes,  with  despondence  hope. 
Hope  conquers  cowardice,  joy  grief : 
Or  at  least,  faith  unbelief. 
Though  dead,  not  dead, 
Not  gone,  though  fled  ; 
Not  lost,  though  vanished. 
In  the  great  gospel  and  true  creed, 
He  is  yet  risen  indeed  ; 
Christ  is  yet  risen." 

He  sees  the  consolation  of  life  in  the  common 
emotions  of  mankind,  while  Arnold  avoids  them, 
to  live  for  cultivation  of  the  beneficent  idea  alone. 

"  A  fugitive  and  gracious  light  he  seeks, 
Shy  to  illumine  ;  and  I  seek  it  too. 
This  does  not  come  with  houses  or  with  gold, 
With  place,  with  honour,  and  a  flattering  crew ; 
'Tis  not  in  the  world's  market  bought  and  sold — 
But  the  smooth-slipping  weeks 
Drop  by,  and  leave  its  seeker  still  untired  ; 
Out  of  the  heed  of  mortals  he  is  gone, 
He  wends  unfollow'd,  he  must  house  alone  ; 
Yet  on  he  fares,  by  his  own  heart  inspired." 

So  do  the  twin-brethren  of  the  Oxford  spirit 
support  and  supplement  one  another,  until  in 
combination  they  present  the  perfect  stature  of  the 
Gentle  Mother's  strenuous  and  cultured  son. 
The  ideals  for  which  they  stood,  and  the  poetry 
in  which  they  would  have  steeped  life,  did  not 
immediately  meet  with  acquiescence,  dough's 
reputation  was  chiefly  posthumous,  and  for  years 
Arnold's  favourite  depreciation  of  himself  as  an 
"  unpopular  author  "  had  more  than  a  rhetorical 

59 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

significance.  But  in  the  ideals  which  they  estab- 
lished we  seem  to  see  the  germ  of  that  spirit 
which  Oxford  is  diffusing  more  widely  every  day  ; 
and  if  it  is  to  the  spirit  of  Clough  that  we  owe 
more  of  the  University  activity  against  the  miseries 
of  the  poor,  it  is  Arnold's  example  that  informs 
the  thought  of  Oxford  at  home  and  abroad  with 
a  certain  reserve  towards  unproven  and  ecstatic 
enthusiasms,  but  also  with  a  perpetual  and  grow- 
ing faith  in  the  permanence  of  the  idea,  and  in  the 
abiding  beauty  of  the  life  that  sets  itself  some 
high  ideal,  and  strives  towards  it  without  re- 
mission : 

"  Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade." 

And  this  movement,  which  was  at  first  a  reaction 
from  the  ecclesiastical  movement  which  preceded 
it  at  Oxford,  has  actually  come,  with  the  progress 
of  time,  to  work  in  close  union  with  its  old  dis- 
sentient ;  so  that  even  those  who  miss  in  Clough 
and  Arnold  just  that  stimulus  of  spiritual  aspiration 
which  they  find  in  Tennyson  and  Browning,  find 
in  them  still  its  inevitable  counterpart,  in  that 
intellectual  aspiration  from  which  true  religion 
can  never  be  divorced.  In  Arnold's  own  words, 
"  we  are  all  seekers  still,"  and  the  surest  con- 
solations of  our  search  are  found  in  those  few  and 
dauntless  spirits,  who,  amid  "  the  strong  infection 
of  our  mental  strife,"  "  keep  ever  calling  us  nearer 
to  the  true  goal  of  all  of  us,  to  the  ideal,  to  per- 
fection, to  beauty,  in  a  word,  which  is  only  Truth 
— seen  from  another  side." 


60 


IDEAS,  EMOTIONS,  AND  MOODS 

IV. — THE  POETRY  OF  EMOTION 

The  reader  who  has  done  me  the  compliment 
of  following  me  so  far  will  no  doubt  have  been 
struck  by  one  prevailing  characteristic  in  which 
the  poets  we  have  been  considering  are  related 
to  one  another — a  characteristic  which  lies  at  the 
very  root  of  their  relation  to  their  art  itself.  In 
their  attitude  to  life  and  its  problems  they  display 
wide  differences  of  opinion  and  conviction,  but 
in  the  method  in  which  they  apply  their  art  to  the 
consideration  of  life  they  are  closely  affiliated. 
And  if  we  try  to  define  this  characteristic,  we  can 
perhaps  best  do  so  by  saying  that  their  object  is 
to  irradiate  life  by  ideas,  to  test  emotion  by  ideas, 
and  in  all  distractions  of  mood  and  circumstance 
to  let  the  idea  measure  the  force  of  the  instinctive 
sensation,  and  stand  as  the  final  arbiter  of  its 
sincerity  and  value.  Poetry,  as  we  know,  has 
been  variously  defined,  and  never  quite  satis- 
factorily ;  but  it  may  perhaps  be  said  without 
fear  of  grave  contradiction  that  there  are  three 
principal  aspects  of  poetry,  in  the  right  com- 
bination of  which  the  highest  form  of  poetic  ex- 
cellence will  be  found  to  consist ;  while  their 
confusion  results  in  partial  and  confined  attain- 
ment, through  the  presentation  of  but  one  side 
of  the  poetic  quality,  or  of  the  different  sides 
insufficiently  assimilated.  Poetry  may  deal  with 
three  separate  activities  of  the  human  mind  ; 
with  ideas,  with  emotions,  and  with  moods.  When 
poetry  is  defined  as  "  a  criticism  of  life,"  the 
framer  of  the  definition  has  in  mind  chiefly  the 
poetry  of  ideas  ;  when  it  is  described  as  "  emotion 
remembered  in  tranquility,"  the  description  is 
61 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

directed  chiefly  to  emotional  poetry  ;  and  when 
we  are  told,  as  we  often  are  nowadays,  that  the 
sincere  reproduction  of  a  moment's  spiritual 
experience  is  the  proper  concern  of  the  poetic  art, 
this  third  and  final  definition  applies  almost  ex- 
clusively to  the  poetry  which  seeks  to  reproduce 
the  writer's  mood  without  any  reference  to  its 
truth  or  value. 

Now,  the  highest  order  of  poetry  will  be  found, 
under  analysis,  to  combine  elements  from  each 
of  these  three  classes,  for  the  emotion,  without 
which  poetry  is  barren,  contains  in  itself  an  in- 
direct reference  to  the  mood  in  which  it  is  evoked, 
while  the  poet  proceeds  from  the  registration  of 
that  emotion  to  test  it  by  the  standard  of  the 
universal  idea.  Thus  poetry  of  the  highest  order 
is  always  found,  as  Professor  Courthope  has  re- 
minded us,  to  contain  both  a  personal  and  a 
universal  element ;  the  personality  lying  in  the 
poignancy  of  the  individual  emotion,  and  in  the 
originality  of  its  expression,  while  the  universal 
truth  is  at  once  appreciated  as  extending  out- 
wardly the  borders  of  the  poet's  own  feeling  by 
its  proved  applicability  to  all  human  nature.  For 
example — to  refer  for  a  moment  to  the  poets  whom 
we  have  already  been  considering — Tennyson's 
"  In  Memoriam  "  and  Browning's  "  Prospice" 
are  alike  poems  charged  with  acute  personal 
emotion  ;  but  the  conformity  of  those  emotions 
to  a  generalized  idea,  and  the  universal  applica- 
bility of  their  sentiment,  lift  them  out  of  the  range 
of  purely  emotional  poetry  into  that  of  the  poetry 
of  ideas,  and  give  them  a  certain  philosophical 
force  of  permanent  implication.  So  long,  we  may 
say,  as  man  regards  with  emotion,  on  the  one  side,. 
62 


THE  POETRY  OF  EMOTION 

the  death  of  a  dear  friend,  and  on  the  other,  the 
certainty  of  his  own  death,  so  long  he  will  feel, 
under  certain  phases  of  the  idea,  as  these  two  poets 
have  felt  in  these  particular  poems.  Here,  there- 
fore, the  emotion  is  irradiated  with  the  idea,  and 
the  poetry  is  raised  by  it  above  the  levels  of 
circumstance  and  occasion. 

Emotion,  then,  is  of  the  essence  of  poetry,  but 
it  is  also  necessary  that  the  emotion  should  be,  as 
it  were,  universalized  ;  and  for  this  process  a 
certain  remoteness  from  its  immediate  influence 
is  obligatory.  The  mind  must  be  detached  from 
the  emotion  before  it  can  appreciate  its  signifi- 
cance ;  and  this  is  precisely  what  Wordsworth 
meant  when  he  said  that  poetry  is  "  emotion 
remembered  in  tranquillity."  The  writer  red-hot 
with  a  noble  rage,  smarting  under  wrong,  may 
produce  poetry  of  great  individual  and  historic 
interest,  no  less  than  of  immense  topical  influence, 
but  he  will  scarcely  give  a  final  utterance  to  a 
permanent  truth.  Now,  the  poetry  which  we  have 
next  to  consider  was  poetry  of  this  secondary 
order.  It  was  a  sort  of  reaction  against  academic 
calm  and  even  against  philosophic  analysis.  It 
was  intensely  human,  sincere,  and  eager  ;  and  in 
its  day  it  had  a  broad  and  humanizing  influence. 
But  it  was  not  poetry  of  the  highest  ideal,  because 
it  was  too  much  in  a  hurry,  too  keen  to  be  pro- 
claiming itself  at  once,  and  too  little  remote  from 
momentary  sensation.  Much  of  it  will  never  be 
read  without  a  responding  emotion  in  the  reader, 
but  very  little  of  it  has  that  high  note  of  universal 
truth  which  is  found  only  with  the  perfect  co- 
operation of  the  transitory  emotion  with  the 
permanent  idea. 

63 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

Of  all  movements  in  Victorian  poetry  this 
emotional  movement  is  the  most  clearly  defined 
and  traceable ;  it  is  immediately  referable  to 
political  and  social  causes,  and  has  strongly 
marked  characteristics  common  to  almost  all  its 
followers.  It  is  therefore  something  of  a  paradox 
that  the  one  considerable  poet  which  it  produced 
should  stand  rather  outside  the  general  move- 
ment, and  should  be  distinguished  by  intellectual 
gifts  of  unusual  breadth  and  vivacity.  And  yet, 
when  we  consider  the  emotional  poetry  of  the 
Victorian  period,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  it 
drew  much  of  its  eager  vitality  and  chivalrous 
sympathy  from  the  tender,  womanly  example  of 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning.  "  Headlong  "  was 
the  nickname  which  her  Italian  master  gave  her 
in  the  schoolroom,  and  headlong  was  the  spirit  of 
the  movement  of  which  she  was  the  bright,  con- 
spicuous star.  She  had,  indeed,  an  intellectual 
foundation  firmer  and  surer  than  any  of  her  com- 
panions ;  but,  when  once  the  inspiration  of  the 
cave  was  upon  her,  she  was  as  voluble,  and  at 
times  as  incoherent,  as  ever  the  Delphic  priestess. 
And  the  example  which  she  set  in  the  neglect  of 
form  was  in  its  day  far-reaching  and  insidious. 
Her  character  was  so  winning,  her  attitude  to 
life  so  sensitive  and  humane,  that  those  who  were 
naturally  drawn  to  her  were  inevitably  entangled 
in  the  meshes  of  her  mannerism  ;  and  a  worse 
model  it  would  be  difficult  to  choose.  Her  passion 
for  fantastic  and  unnatural  adjectives,  her  slipshod 
licence  in  the  matter  of  false  rhyme  and  assonance, 
are  as  fatal  technically  as  her  feminine  trick  of 
over-emphasis  and  hyperbole  is  distracting  in- 
tellectually. In  the  "  Sonnets  from  the  Portu- 

64 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING 

guese,"  it  is  true,  she  touches  high- water  mark  ; 
but  these  were  inspired  by  the  great  passion  of 
her  life  ;  and,  being  deliberately  wrought  in  a 
restricted  form,  won  her  for  the  single  task  from 
almost  all  her  natural  extravagances.  The  rest  of 
her  work  is  technically  on  a  very  different  level. 
Still,  even  in  poetry,  technique  is  not  every- 
thing ;  and  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  very 
naturally  proved  a  living  influence  in  her  day  ; 
indeed,  much  of  her  work  remains,  in  her  own 
phrase,  "  humanly  acceptive  "  and  stimulating. 
She  was  moved  less  by  the  immediate  interests 
of  the  hour  than  some  of  her  contemporaries  in 
the  movement ;  but,  like  Sydney  Dobell,  she 
was  passionately  zealous  in  the  cause  of  Italian 
freedom,  and  she  shared  with  James  Thomson  a 
yearning  sympathy  with  the  suffering  and  re- 
striction of  the  working  classes.  To  this  enthusiasm 
we  owe  "  The  Cry  of  the  Children  " — one  of  the 
most  vigorous  occasional  poems  in  the  language. 

"  They  look  up  with  their  pale  and  sunken  faces, 
And  their  looks  are  sad  to  see, 
For  the  man's  hoary  anguish  draws  and  presses 
Down  the  cheeks  of  infancy  ; 
'  Your  old  earth,'  they  say,  '  is  very  dreary  ' ; 
'  Our  young  feet,'  they  say,  '  are  very  weak  ; 
Few  paces  have  we  taken,  yet  are  weary — 
Our  grave-rest  is  very  far  to  seek  : 
Ask  the  aged  why  they  weep,  and  not  the  children, 
For  the  outside  earth  is  cold, 
And  we  young  ones  stand  without,  in  our  bewilder- 
ing, 
And  the  graves  are  for  the  old.'  ' 

The  eager  sincerity  of  the  feeling  rings  out  above 
the  jarring  assonances  and  jolting  metre  ;  and  it 

65  F 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

is  this  patent  sincerity  that  gives  a  haunting  charm 
to  almost  everything  she  wrote. 

"  What  do  we  give  to  our  beloved  ? 
A  little  faith  all  undisproved, 
A  little  dust  to  overweep, 
And  bitter  memories  to  make 
The  whole  earth  blasted  for  our  sake  : 
He  giveth  His  beloved  sleep." 

This  wells  up  from  a  pure  heart  fervently  ;  and 
the  fountain  of  her  verse,  troubled  as  it  generally 
is  upon  the  surface,  is  often  lucid  and  fresh  at  its 
depth. 

"  Say  never,  ye  loved  once  : 

God  is  too  near  above,  the  grave,  beneath, 

And  all  our  moments  breathe 

Too  quick  in  mysteries  of  life  and  death, 

For  such  a  word.  The  eternities  avenge 

Affections  light  of  range. 

There  comes  no  change  to  justify  that  change, 

Whatever  comes — Loved   once  !  " 

This  is  Mrs.  Browning  at  her  best,  and  here 
emotion  is  so  nervously  felt  and  expressed  as 
almost  to  seem  transferred  into  the  region  of 
pure  ideas.  But  there  is  just  a  little  too  much 
protestation,  just  that  rhetorical  emphasis  of  the 
argument  that  dulls  the  edge  of  poetry.  One  is 
reminded  of  Coleridge's  treatment  of  broken 
affection  ;  and,  setting  the  two  passages  over 
against  one  another,  one  feels  in  the  earlier  poet 
a  certain  wistful  tenderness  that  rings  more  true 
than  all  Mrs.  Browning's  earnest  eloquence  : 

"  Alas  !  They  had  been  friends  in  youth  ; 
But  whispering  tongues  can  poison  truth  ; 
And  constancy  lives  in  realms  above  ; 

66 


ALEXANDER  SMITH 


And  life  is  thorny  ;  and  youth  is  vain  ; 
And  to  be  wroth  with  one  we  love 
Doth  work  like  madness  in  the  brain." 

Perhaps  the  contrast  which  these  two  passages 
suggest  indicates  fairly  justly  the  case  against 
the  poetry  of  emotion.  Here,  once  again,  "  The 
lady  doth  protest  too  much  "  ;  and  with  a  sincere 
over-emphasis  which  is  nevertheless  a  violence 
to  art. 

This  is,  indeed,  the  differentiating  character- 
istic of  the  emotional  movement,  which  seems  to 
sway  with  every  phase  of  popular  enthusiasm. 
The  Reform  Bill,  its  hopes  and  disappointments, 
the  Chartists'  riots,  the  conflict  of  religion  and 
science,  the  terrors  of  the  Crimean  War — all 
these  and  many  other  passing  excitements  in- 
flame its  energy.  There  are  many  voices,  but  the 
same  spirit.  The  marked  characteristics  of  the 
movement  are  great  natural  energy,  expressing 
itself  in  language  of  much  vigour  and  fervour, 
together  with  a  paralizing  incoherence,  which 
sweeps  the  singer  off  his  feet  into  wastes  of 
eloquent  verbosity.  Alexander  Smith  is  a  promi- 
nent example,  and  a  favourable  one  as  well,  for 
he  enjoyed  a  rich  imagination,  which  he  was 
fortunately  able  to  indulge  in  luxuriant  and  often 
penetrating  expression.  But  his  very  facility  was 
his  bane,  for  an  abundant  vocabulary  led  him  into 
excesses  of  decoration,  and  his  picture  was  apt 
to  become  a  blurred  mass  of  colour. 

"  Yet  Love  !  I  am  unblest, 

With  many  doubts  opprest 

I  wander  like  the  desert  wind  without  a  place  of  rest. 
Could  I  but  win  you  for  an  hour  from  off  that  starry 
shore, 

6? 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

The  hunger  of  my  soul  were  stilled ;  for  Death  hath 

told  you  more 
Than    the    melancholy    world    doth    know — things 

deeper  than  all  lore 
You  could  teach  me,  Barbara  !  " 

There  is  true  emotion  here,  but  the  expression 
is  flaccid.  And  that  was  exactly  the  fault  of  so 
much  of  the  poetry  of  the  kind.  Some  of  its  in- 
sufficiency was  no  doubt  due  to  the  attempt  to 
translate  into  poetry  radically  unpoetic  subjects, 
without  enough  attention  to  the  necessary  art 
required.  Thus  James  Thomson  (B.V.),  a  poet 
of  perfervid  imagination,  desired  above  all  things 
to  be  an  emotional  realist,  as  his  own  poetical 
credo  assures  us. 

'  Singing  is  sweet,  but  be  sure  of  this, 
Lips  only  sing  when  they  cannot  kiss. 

Statues  and  pictures  and  verse  may  be  grand, 
But  they  are  not  the  life  for  which  they  stand." 

The  result,  however,  of  emotional  realism  in 
poetry  is  not  encouraging  when  it  lands  us  in 
such  barren  pictures  as  this  of  Hampstead  Heath. 

"  Here  we  will  sit,  my  darling, 
And  dream  an  hour  away  ; 
The  donkeys  are  hurried  and  worried, 
But  we  are  not  donkeys  to-day. 

Through  all  the  weary  week,  dear, 
We  toil  in  the  work  down  there, 
Tied  to  a  desk  and  a  counter, 
A  patient,  stupid  pair." 

And  the  two  Chartist  poets,  the  two  Joneses, 
Ernest  and  Ebenezer,  become  flatulent  in  political 
enthusiasm,  and  commonplace  in  the  affections. 
Here,  for  instance,  is  a  Chartist  marching  song  : 
68 


SYDNEY   DOBELL 


"  Sharpen  the  sickle  ;  how  full  the  ears  ! 

Our  children  are  crying  for  bread  ! 
And  the  field  has  been  watered  with  orphans'  tears 

And  enriched  with  their  fathers  dead. 
And  hopes  that  are  buried,  and  hearts  that  broke, 

Lie  deep  in  the  treasuring  sod  ; 
Then  sweep  down  the  grain  with  a  thunderstroke, 

In  the  name  of  humanity's  God  !  " 

And  here  is  a  poem  of  the  domestic  affections  : 

"  A  pleasant  sail,  my  child,  my  wife, 
O'er  a  pleasant  sea,  to  many  is  life  ; 
The  wind  blows  warm,  and  they  dread  no  storm 
And  wherever  they  go,  kind  friends  are  rife. 

But  wife  and  child,  the  love,  the  love, 

That  lifteth  us  to  the  saints  above, 

Could  only  have  grown  where  storms  have  blown 

The  truth  and  strength  of  the  heart  to  prove." 

Of  these  the  former  is  turgidly  conventional, 
the  latter  unaffectedly  unimpressive,  but  they  are 
perfectly  fair  examples  of  the  poetry  of  the  move- 
ment. For  when,  in  the  case  of  Sydney  Dobell, 
the  muse  takes  broader  pinions,  her  flight  is 
uncertain  and  fitful.  Dobell  had  illimitable 
ambitions  ;  in  "  The  Roman  "  he  essayed  the 
cause  of  Italian  liberty,  while  in  "  Balder  "  he 
sought  to  follow  a  human  soul  in  its  journey  from 
doubt  to  faith.  But  his  passages  of  poetry  are  in- 
termittent ;  and  when  his  emotion  runs  away 
with  him,  he  becomes  volubly  and  interminably 
inconsequent.  In  him,  too,  the  laxity  and  inco- 
herence of  metre  reaches  the  point  of  dissolution. 

"  Our  host  moved  on  to  the  war, 

While  England,  England,  England,  England,  England! 

Was  blown  from  line  to  line  near  and  far. 

69 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

And  like  the  morning  sea,  our  bayonets  you  might 

see, 

Come  beaming,  gleaming,  streaming, 
Streaming,  gleaming,  beaming, 
Beaming,  streaming,  gleaming  to  the  war  !  " 

The  effect  sought  here  is  clear  enough  to  divine ; 
but  the  effect  is  far  from  attainment.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  there  is  quite  insufficient  consider- 
ation of  the  method  which  must  underlie  all 
artistic  representation. 

Enough  has,  perhaps,  been  said  to  indicate  the 
nature  and  restriction  of  this  broad  stream  of 
emotional  poetry  which  flowed  so  turbulently 
and  overpoweringly  through  the  middle  of  the 
Victorian  period.  It  found  reinforcement  from 
half  the  unmeasured  enthusiasm  of  the  hour, 
and,  being  essentially  topical  in  its  tone  and 
sentiment,  it  enjoyed  no  inconsiderable  popu- 
larity. To  the  student  of  poetry  to-day  it  is  chiefly 
interesting  historically.  For  in  a  fashion  it  carries 
on  the  Byronic  movement,  and  is  itself  a  symptom 
of  that  growing  democratization  of  literature 
which  some  of  us  believe  to  be  a  dangerous 
menace  to  the  future  preservation  of  the  literary 
spirit  in  England.  Fortunately  it  has  not  been 
allowed  to  pass  unchallenged,  and  the  movement 
which  we  shall  next  have  to  consider  vindicated 
so  thoroughly  the  claim  of  form  in  poetry  as 
almost  to  have  obliterated  the  influence  of  form- 
lessness from  the  verse  of  the  present  hour.  While 
the  emotional  movement  was  at  its  height,  English 
poetry,  despite  the  unbroken  example  of  Tenny- 
son, was  perilously  threatened  by  a  wave  of  law- 
lessness which,  had  it  spread  more  widely,  must 
unquestionably  have  played  havoc  with  the  taste 
70 


THE  PRE-RAPHAELITES 


and  judgment  of  the  younger  generation.  But 
literature  is  generally  justified  of  her  children, 
and  the  reaction  which  followed,  a  reaction  of 
much  art  and  a  little  artifice,  has  restored  the 
balance.  Nowadays,  whatever  the  danger  of 
poetry  may  be,  it  is  at  least  not  likely  soon  to 
revert  to  flaccid  metre  or  sentimental  excess. 

V. — THE  POETRY  OF  REACTION  AND  ARTIFICE 

An  outburst  of  emotion  is  invariably  followed 
by  reaction,  and  the  course  of  Victorian  poetry 
did  not  fail  to  follow  in  the  common  way.  It  was, 
indeed,  inevitable  that  it  should  be  so  ;  for,  by 
the  time  the  sentimental  movement  had  spent  its 
force,  its  own  risks  and  penalties  were  clearly 
enough  revealed.  Even  Tennyson  had  not  alto- 
gether escaped  its  influence.  The  period  which 
educed  from  him  "Enoch  Arden,"  "Sea]  Dreams," 
and  those  other  gently  emotional  stories  of 
domestic  life,  was  certainly  the  least  poetically 
fruitful  in  his  career,  and  the  homely  sentimen- 
tality of  their  tone  is  directly  referable  to  the 
literary  influences  of  the  time.  Poetry  was  for  the 
moment  at  an  ebb  ;  workmanship  and  melody 
had  declined,  and  an  attempt  to  lend  vitality  to 
secondary  art  by  concentrating  it  upon  "  actual  " 
and  popular  subjects  had  resulted  in  an  almost 
inevitable  loss  of  dignity  and  beauty.  The  de- 
mocratizing spirit  was  threatening  literature,  and 
poetry  in  particular  appeared  to  be  in  grave 
danger.  Suddenly  the  change  came,  and  with  it 
a  complete  reaction  in  almost  every  branch  of 
art.  The  Pre-Raphaelite  movement,  with  all  its 
subsequent  developments  and  side-issues,  was 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

the  salvation  of  English  art.  It  did  a  great  deal 
also  to  save  and  re-vivify  English  poetry. 

We  have  seen  that  the  emotional  movement 
had  left  the  field  dull  and  exhausted.  There  is, 
no  doubt,  room  for  plentiful  humanity  in  what 
Swinburne  called  "  idylls  of  the  farm  and  the 
mill ;  idylls  of  the  dining-room  and  the  deanery  ; 
and  idylls  of  the  gutter  and  the  gibbet,"  but  only 
a  consummate  talent  can  lend  ideality  to  the 
commonplace  ;  and  even  Patmore'  s  quintes- 
sentially  poetic  temperament  could  not  always 
raise  his  subjects  above  their  surface  level  of 
homely  familiarity.  For  temperaments  less  radi- 
cally artistic  the  attempt  was  full  of  fatal  pitfalls. 
Rhetoric  almost  homiletic  took  the  place  of  ideas, 
and,  as  the  charm  of  fancy  and  imagination  re- 
ceded, the  art  of  expression  naturally  broadened 
down  into  thinly  disguised  prose.  Art  had  suffered 
in  the  same  school.  At  the  Royal  Academy 
Exhibition  of  1858  the  most  popular  picture  of 
the  year — a  picture  which  attracted  almost 
unparalleled  interest — was  a  huge,  formless 
representation  of  a  familiar  scene  in  national  life, 
profusely  detailed  and  accurate,  but  absolutely 
void  of  imagination  and  feeling.  The  decoration 
of  the  ordinary  English  home  accorded  no  less 
with  this  blunted  sense  of  propriety  and  beauty. 
Wax-flowers  and  wool-work  ;  heavy  cornices  and 
funereal  curtains — all  sweetness  and  light  were 
excluded  from  the  living  rooms  of  the  people  by 
these  ugly  and  insincere  suggestions  of  an  artificial, 
tortured  life.  The  new  movement  struck  with  one 
blow  at  all  these  false  gods  of  artificiality  ;  brain 
and  eye  alike  were  to  be  filled  with  a  new  sense 
of  freshness  and  clean  beauty.  The  Pre-Raphael- 
72 


THE  RETURN  TO  BEAUTY 


ites  were  to  light  the  lamp  of  taste  in  every  simple 
home. 

Such  were  the  ideals  of  the  movement  of  re- 
action, which  early  in  the  fifties  began  at  Oxford, 
where  so  much  that  is  true  and  beautiful  has 
always  begun,  and  soon  extended  its  borders  into 
the  whole  field  of  English  art.  And  it  is  suggestive 
of  many  considerations  that,  though  the  move- 
ment was  primarily  directed  against  artificiality, 
its  methods  were  essentially  those  of  a  modified 
and  re-directed  artifice.  Art,  indeed  (whatever 
the  logical  framer  of  definitions  may  say  to  the 
contrary),  art  can  never  be  separated  from  artifice. 
The  emotional  movement  had  itself  been  designed 
to  controvert  what  it  believed  to  be  artificial ;  it 
sought  to  return  to  primary  human  emotions, 
and  to  appeal  to  the  heart  of  the  people  through 
the  open  and  direct  channels  of  popular  senti- 
ment. But  when  it  came  to  the  test,  sentiment, 
without  the  artifice  by  which  alone  sentiment 
can  be  refined,  failed  it ;  and  poetry  was  once 
more  stretching  out  its  hands  vaguely  towards 
the  evasive  light  of  beauty,  "  still  clutching  the 
inviolable  shade."  Actuality  and  the  realistic 
claims  of  the  present  hour  had  landed  it  in  a 
slough  of  indecision.  "  Turn  away  from  these 
things  altogether,"  said  the  Pre-Raphaelites, 
"  and  lift  up  your  eyes  unto  the  hills.  Beauty  is 
not  in  the  present,  but  it  has  been  in  the  past. 
Let  us  learn  the  lesson  of  the  past,  and  return  to 
primitive  beauty." 

"  Forget  six  counties  overhung  with  smoke, 
Forget  the  snorting  steam  and  piston-stroke, 
Forget  the  spreading  of  the  hideous  town  ; 
Think  rather  of  the  pack-horse  on  the  down, 

73 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

And  dream  of  London,  small,  and  white,  and  clean, 
The  clear  Thames  bordered  by  its  gardens  green  ; 
Think  that  below  bridge  the  green  lapping  waves 
Smite  some  few  keels  that  bear  Levantine  staves, 
Cut  from  the  yew  wood  on  the  burnt-up  hill, 
And  pointed  jars  that  Greek  hands  toiled  to  fill, 
And  treasured  scanty  spice  from  some  far  sea, 
Florence  gold  cloth,  and  Ypres  napery, 
And  cloth  of  Bruges,  and  hogsheads  of  Guienne  ; 
While  nigh  the  thronged  wharf  Geoffrey  Chaucer's 

pen 

Moves  over  bills  of  lading — mid  such  times 
Shall  dwell  the  hollow  puppets  of  my  rhymes." 

The  heart  of  the  movement  beats  in  these  open- 
ing verses.  And  so  Morris  leads  his  readers  out, 
under  a  canopy,  as  it  were,  of  apple-blossom, 
where  knights  in  armour,  bound  on  a  chivalrous 
quest,  move  over  turf  jewelled  with  flowers,  to 
the  faint  harmony  of  virginals.  It  is  a  pagan 
paradise,  but  it  is  not  without  manly  adventures. 
The  heroes  have  savage  passions,  but  they  quit 
them  like  men ;  and  over  their  life  and  death  Art 
draws  a  misty,  transparent  veil,  through  which 
they  show  like  figures  in  a  tapestry,  harmoniously 
melting  into  the  woods  and  bowers  which  sur- 
round them.  So  too  Rossetti,  working  rather  in 
colour  with  the  brush,  sees  the  heavens  opened, 
the  souls  mounting  up  to  God  like  thin  flames, 
and  the  haunting  sorrow  of  the  happy. 

"  '  We  two,'  she  said,  '  will  seek  the  groves 
Where  the  lady  Mary  is, 
With  her  five  handmaidens,  whose  names 
Are  five  sweet  symphonies, 
Cecily,  Gertrude,  Magdalen, 
Margaret  and  Rosalys. 

74 


THE  POETRY  OF  MOODS 


'  Circle-wise  sit  they,  with  bound  locks 

And  foreheads  garlanded  ; 

Into  the  fine  cloth,  white  like  flame, 

Weaving  the  golden  thread, 

To  fashion  the  birth-robes  for  them 

Who  are  just  born,  being  dead.' ' 

Beauty  of  the  form,  beauty  of  the  suggestion, 
and  above  all  beauty  of  the  word — these  are  the 
prevailing  occupations  of  the  poet.  He  lingers, 
with  a  sort  of  loving  reluctance  to  be  gone,  over 
the  "  five  sweet  symphonies  "  of  the  names  ; 
and,  if  an  exquisite  picture  can  be  painted  on  the 
mind's  eye,  it  matters  but  little  to  the  poet  that 
the  impression  left  proves,  on  reflection,  vague 
and  shadowy. 

"  Shall  I  not  one  day  remember  thy  bower, 
One  day  when  all  days  are  one  day  to  me  ? 
Thinking,  '  I  stirred  not,  and  yet  had  the  power  !  ' 
Yearning,  '  Oh  God,  if  again  it  might  be  ! ' 
Peace,  peace  !  such  a  small  lamp  illumes,  on  this 

highway, 

So  dimly  so  few  steps  in  front  of  my  feet, 
Yet  shows  me  that  her  way  is  parted  from  my 

way  .  .  . 
Out  of  sight,  beyond  light,  at  what  goal  may  we 

meet  ?  " 

The  truth  is  that  this  poetry,  surcharged  as  it  is 
with  emotion,  and  trembling  under  the  surface 
with  ideas  half-realized,  is  really  neither  the 
poetry  of  ideas,  nor  of  emotions,  but  of  moods. 
The  poetry  of  ideas  had  seemed,  from  recent 
experience,  to  land  the  thinker  in  a  philosophy 
too  consciously  moral  to  be  altogether  artistic  ; 
the  poetry  of  emotion  had  wasted  itself  in  senti- 
mentality over  uninspiring  objects.  And  so  the 

75 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

reaction  is  from  both  the  idea  and  the  emotion 
to  the  mood  ;  the  poet's  desire  is  to  evoke  in  his 
reader  a  certain  mood  or  tone  of  mind  which  is 
neither  active  thought  nor  active  emotion,  but 
quiescent,  sympathetic  resignation  to  a  sense 
of  beauty  remote  but  permeating.  In  such  a 
mood  we  neither  argue  nor  ask,  but  are  con- 
tent to  resign  ourselves  to  an  effect  which  is 
no  less  compelling  in  that  it  seems  to  evade 
analysis. 

So  much,  in  brief,  for  the  spiritual  tone  of  the 
Pre-Raphaelite  movement ;  it  remains  to  say 
something  of  what  has  been  by  far  its  most  search- 
ing influence — namely,  its  effect  upon  poetical 
technique.  Mood,  tone — the  essential  qualities 
of  a  poet — are  not  easily  assimilated  by  his  follow- 
ers ;  but  metrical  innovations  are  common  and 
easy  property,  and  they  at  once  find  those  who 
can  adapt  and  imitate  them.  And  it  is  really 
difficult  to  estimate  how  much  modern  prosody 
owes  to  the  reaction  from  the  lax  and  jog-trot 
melodies  of  the  emotionalists  :  because  at  first 
sight  Swinburne  appears  to  have  actually  revo- 
lutionized English  metre.  That,  perhaps,  he  did 
not  quite  do  ;  but  it  is  no  less  true  that  we  owe 
it  principally  to  him  that  the  technical  finish  of 
even  the  poorest  verse  nowadays  is  far  in  advance 
of  much  of  the  approved  poetry  of  fifty  or  sixty 
years  ago.  Since  Swinburne  opened  the  gates  of 
English  song  to  measures  which  appear  to  be 
actually  quantitative  rather  than  accentual,  the 
metrical  resources  of  the  language  have  assumed 
an  entirely  new  complexion.  And  there  is  scarcely 
a  living  English  poet  in  whose  work  one  may  not 
find  traces  of  the  influence  of  this  illuminating 
76 


THE  REACTION  OF  SWINBURNE 

liberty  upon  the  breadth  and  diversity  of  current 
harmonies. 

Swinburne  has  been  called  "  a  poet  of  revolt," 
and,  since  a  good  phrase  always  sticks,  the  ex- 
pression has  gained  a  currency  rather  out  of  pro- 
portion with  its  accuracy.  For,  though  his  in- 
dividuality is  more  compelling  and  his  tone  more 
insistent  than  those  of  the  two  poets  we  have  just 
been  discussing,  he  is  really  no  more  of  a  revolu- 
tionist than  his  Pre-Raphaelite  friends  ;  his 
movement  is  entirely  reactionary.  To  be  a  poet  of 
revolt  a  man  must  have  some  definite  goal,  some 
propaganda,  some  "  programme  "  (to  use  an 
ugly  but  convenient  term)  ;  but  Swinburne  has 
none  of  these.  "  I  have  simplified  my  politics," 
said  Byron,  "  into  an  utter  detestation  of  all  exist- 
ing Governments,"  and  this  deliciously -sweeping 
indignation  is  very  much  the  extent  of  Swin- 
burne's "  revolt."  In  reality  he  reacts,  returning, 
not  like  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  to  mediaevalism, 
but  to  classicism,  and  to  the  primitive  passions 
of  that  "  noble  savage  "  which  he  has  set  up  as  an 
ideal  of  man  uncribbed  and  uncabined  by  con- 
vention or  custom.  To  the  young  men  of  his  own 
youth  his  influence  was  intoxicating.  He  seemed 
the  warrior  in  the  "  war  of  the  liberation  of 
humanity,"  who  was  to  free  them  from  the 
hindering  restraint  of  artificial  morality  ;  they 
chanted  his  songs,  as  later  on  the  Socialists  chanted 
those  of  William  Morris,  and  they  believed  that 
emancipation  was  dawning.  Like  other  young 
enthusiasms,  that  hope  has  withered  in  illusion, 
but  it  has  left  us  a  mass  of  poetry  unexampled  in 
the  English  language  for  fertility  of  music  or 
intensity  of  lyrical  fervour.  "  The  lisp  of  the 

77 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

leaves  and  the  ripple  of  rain  "  receive  onoma- 
topoeic expression  in  his  lilting  and  interwoven 
harmonies  ;  the  melody  rises  and  falls  with  the 
mood,  till  that  most  formal  of  measures,  the  heroic 
couplet  itself,  grows  billowy  with  waves  of 
emotion.  No  such  riot  of  melody  exists  elsewhere 
in  English  poetry,  and  its  influence  upon  prosody 
has  been  the  strongest  influence  of  the  last  half 
century. 

We  know,  indeed,  that  historically  it  was 
immediate  and  inspiriting.  It  was  not  only  that 
he  inspired  deliberate  and  skilful  disciples,  such 
as  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy  and  F.  W.  H.  Myers, 
but  that  his  metrical  discoveries  prompted  in- 
dependent and  fruitful  research.  The  publication 
of  "  Poems  and  Ballads  "  set  all  young  poets  in 
rivalry ,  to  find  for  themselves  new  forms  matching 
these  revivals  of  the  quantitative  glories  of  the 
Greek  chorus  ;  and  it  happened  that,  at  the  same 
moment  and  quite  without  collusion,  a  body  of 
poets  of  the  younger  generation  were  turning 
their  attention  to  French  forms  of  verse,  and 
essaying  to  fit  our  less  pliable  syllables  into  the 
dainty  feet  and  rhymes  of  the  rondeau,  the 
villanelle,  and  the  ballade.  This  movement  of  the 
early  seventies,  which  included  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson,  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse,  Andrew  Lang, 
and  even  so  dissimilar  a  writer  as  W.  E.  Henley, 
is  extremely  interesting,  not  only  for  its  relation 
to  the  general  effort  towards  novelty  of  lyrical 
resource,  but  for  its  own  sake  and  its  own  achieve- 
ment. Andrew  Lang  has  written  Ballades,  whose 
praise  is  in  all  anthologies  ;  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse 
was  the  first  to  use  in  English  the  difficult  and 
rolling  metre  of  the  Chant  Royal,  and  he  used  it 

78 


TECHNICAL   EXPERIMENTS 

with  singular  success  ;  while  Mr.  Dobson  has 
employed  most  of  the  old  French  forms  with  inim- 
itable felicity ;  and  has  always  succeeded  in  convey- 
ing into  these  decorative  measures  an  emotional 
sincerity  which  lifts  them  altogether  above  the 
interests  of  a  merely  metrical  or  artificial  exercise. 

And,  apart  from  technical  questions  altogether, 
this  company  of  poets,  together  with  other  of 
their  contemporaries,  of  whom  something  remains 
to  be  said  in  the  concluding  paper  of  this  series, 
are  distinguished  as  part  of  the  reactionary  move- 
ment which  began  in  their  boyhood,  by  a  certain 
remoteness  from  contemporary  interests,  and  by 
a  return  to  the  pursuit  of  beauty  in  periods 
separated  from  their  own.  Andrew  Lang's  allegi- 
ance was  with  the  classics,  Mr.  Gosse's  note  is  of 
the  renaissance,  while  Mr.  Dobson  has  revived 
for  us  the  eighteenth  century,  and  permeated 
its  associations  with  a  poetry  which  criticism  has 
sometimes  denied  to  that  period  of  prose.  Finally, 
it  is  not  a  little  significant  that  the  most  conscious 
and  elaborate  poetic  artist  of  our  day,  Mr.  Robert 
Bridges,  is  almost  exclusively  classical  in  tone  and 
inspiration,  modelling  himself  upon  the  Miltonic 
manner  and  the  severely  "  grand  style."  But  of 
Mr.  Bridges  there  will  be  more  to  say  when  we 
attempt  a  final  glance  at  the  present  state  of  poetry 
and  its  promises  for  the  future. 

It  is  impossible,  however,  to  part  from  the 
poetic  movement  which  we  have  just  been  con- 
sidering without  a  grateful  acknowledgment  of 
its  beneficent  influence  upon  the  general  course 
of  contemporary  poetry.  It  is  a  movement  of 
divagations,  and  it  has  not  been  without  its  ex- 
cesses. But  it  restored  the  balance  ;  and  through 

79 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

means  which  may  at  times  have  seemed  artificial, 
it  did  great  and  lasting  service  to  art.  We  are 
continually  told  by  the  critics  of  the  Press  that 
the  general  level  of  verse  is  much  higher  now  than 
it  was,  for  example,  in  the  old  days  of  the  "  Keep- 
sakes," the  "  Amulets,"  and  the  "  Friendship's 
Garlands,"  and  the  criticism  is  entirely  true.  But 
the  poet,  no  less  than  the  ordinary  human  child, 
is  born  with  hereditary  advantages.  "  Other  men 
have  laboured,  and  we  have  entered  into  their 
labours."  It  is  comparatively  easy  for  our  con- 
temporaries to  write  well,  because  others  have 
written  so  very  much  better  before  them  ;  and 
the  history  of  the  evolution  of  the  poetical  art  in 
England  may  well  cause  some  searchings  of  heart 
to  the  easy  self-confidence  of  the  younger  genera- 
tion. For,  if  literary  evolution  has  cause  to  be 
proud  of  her  sons,  they  in  their  turn  can  hardly 
deny  that,  in  precept  and  example,  they  are  born 
into  a  goodly  heritage. 

VI. — RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

The  Pre-Raphaelite  movement,  with  its  rich 
and  varied  train  of  neo-romantic  experiment  and 
association,  was  the  last  clearly-defined  develop- 
ment in  Victorian  poetry.  Thereafter  there  was 
much  poetical  activity  both  strenuous  and  fruitful, 
culminating  perhaps  in  Tennyson's  remarkable 
volume  of  "  Ballads,"  in  which,  at  the  ripe  age 
of  seventy-one,  the  leader  of  the  singing  band 
revealed  himself  as  ready,  like  his  own  Ulysses, 
to  essay  new  achievements  in  the  very  twilight 
of  natural  energy.  There  were  not  wanting,  more- 
pver,  certain  organized  efforts  towards  literary 

80 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  ART 


departures  and  revivals,  which  seemed  at  times 
likely  to  mature  into  definite  and  prevailing  fash- 
ions, but  passed  away  without  realizing  their  own 
expectations.  All  these  changes  are  interesting  and 
symptomatic,  but  their  influence  was  too  restricted 
and  their  development  too  early  checked  for  them 
to  take  rank  with  the  wide  and  representative 
movements  which  were  responsible  for  the  very 
character  and  course  of  Victorian  literature. 

Looking  back,  then,  for  a  moment  at  the  change- 
ful field  which  we  have  been  traversing,  we  see 
that  these  representative  movements  are  closely 
allied,  not  only  with  the  development  of  national 
thought  and  character,  but  also  with  each  other  ; 
rolling  up,  as  it  were,  like  waves,  and  following, 
not  as  direct  results  one  of  another,  but  as  simul- 
taneous and  related  consequences  of  powers  and 
energies  underlying  and  transcending  themselves. 
For,  though  it  has  been  necessary  to  treat  them 
in  sequence,  it  must  be  remembered  that  all  these 
movements  overlap  one  another,  and  interact 
contemporaneously,  so  that  there  is  an  unbroken 
chain  of  interest  and  activity.  Doubt  and  faith 
exist  side  by  side,  presenting  the  same  problem 
for  solution. 

"  Stern  law  of  every  mortal  lot ! 

Which  man,  proud  man,  finds  hard  to  bear, 
And  builds  himself  I  know  not  what 
Of  second  life  I  know  not  where." 

Then  to  the  vain  hedonism  which  so  often  springs 
from  a  tired  agnosticism,  the  poet  of  a  stronger 
faith  replies  : 
"  Fool !  All  that  is,  at  all, 

Lasts  ever,  past  recall ; 

Earth  changes,  but  thy  soul  and  God  stand  sure  ; 

Si  G 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

What  entered  into  thee, 
That  was,  is,  and  shall  be  : 

Time's  wheel  runs  back  or  stops  :  Potter  and  clay 
endure." 

And  so  the  old  discussions  multiply  with  new 
interpretations,  till  suddenly  another  familiar 
criticism  is  revived  : 

"  Know  thou  thyself ;  presume  not  God  to  scan  ; 
The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man." 

Then,  very  much  as  the  Augustan  poets  followed 
upon  the  Metaphysical,  there  arises  a  new  school 
of  humanistic  poetry  ;  working,  of  course,  on 
entirely  different  lines  and  in  an  entirely  different 
spirit  from  the  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  yet  having  this  essential  characteristic  in 
common  with  them,  that  its  interest  is  human 
rather  than  philosophical.  Being  born,  however, 
in  a  time  of  alternating  emotions,  it  soon  loses  its 
foothold.  The  movement,  which  sprang  from 
sincere  enthusiasm  and  poignant  sympathy,  dis- 
sipates itself  in  a  complete  wreck  of  method  and 
purpose,  and  Art  again  takes  up  its  parable. 

"  Beauty  is  Truth  :  Truth  beauty, — that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

Poetry  again  calls  its  followers  away  from  all  per- 
plexing questions,  away  from  the  contemplation 
of  suffering  and  distress  ;  again,  as  so  often  in 
the  recurring  history  of  art,  it  points  to  exquisite- 
ness  of  form  and  fervour  of  mood  as  the  only 
anodynes  for  the  sick  unrest  "  which  men  miscall 
delight."  The  history  of  Victorian  Poetry  is  the 
history  of  all  art  ;  the  same  eternal  forces  underlie 
it.  On  the  one  side  the  spirit  of  beauty,  on  the 
other  the  spirit  of  humanity  ;  on  the  one  side 
82 


ART  AND  MORALS 


^Esthetics,  on  the  other  Ethics.  By  whatever  names 
the  two  spirits,  contending  yet  allied,  may  be 
called,  their  hold  upon  poetry  and  the  discussion 
of  their  claims  in  the  evolution  of  art  are  as  old  as 
human  effort ;  and  the  secret  of  all  literary  move- 
ments, viewed  microscopically,  is  found  to  lie  in 
their  relation  to  this  perpetual  problem. 

But  while  the  one  main  problem — the  relation 
of  art  and  life, — runs,  like  an  undercurrent,  be- 
neath all  poetical  activity,  the  surface  of  the  art 
presents  from  time  to  time  a  kaleidoscopic  panor- 
ama of  change  and  diversity.  Nor  has  the  develop- 
ment of  poetry  been  in  any  sense  arrested  since 
the  re-assertion  of  the  old  truth  by  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites  ;  on  the  contrary,  the  poetry  of  the 
last  twenty  years  has  presented  many  interesting 
phases,  and  suggested  many  expectations  for  the 
future.  There  have  been,  in  the  first  place,  various 
off-shoots  of  the  new  romanticism.  The  little 
revival  of  the  Celtic  spirit  in  poetry,  of  which, 
perhaps,  rather  too  much  has  been  made  by 
current  criticism,  is  a  clear,  if  unconscious,  de- 
velopment of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  brotherhood. 
It  shares  with  the  earlier  movement  the  pictorial 
quality  of  its  imagery,  and  derives  from  it,  no  less 
certainly,  that  tendency  to  vagueness  and  mys- 
ticism which  is  not  always  free  from  the  risk  of 
becoming  inarticulate.  Of  the  poets  of  the  younger 
generation  few  have  a  truer  sense  of  beauty  than 
Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats,  and  none  have  served  poetry 
better,  by  example,  in  keeping  it  clear  of  con- 
taminating influences.  Still,  it  is  possible  to  forget, 
in  the  absorbed  pursuit  of  beauty ,  that  art,  followed 
exclusively  for  the  sake  of  art,  is  apt  to  revenge 
itself  by  lapses  into  over-artifice,  and  some  recent 

83 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

attempts  towards  an  English  school  of  symbolism 
have  seemed  to  lack  the  sincerity  without  which 
no  living  art  has  ever  subsisted.  This  was  always 
the  risk  of  the  aesthetic  movement,  and  it  has  be- 
come clearer  in  some  of  its  subsequent  develop- 
ments. Just  as  the  emotional  tendency  overran 
itself  into  hysteria,  so  the  purely  aesthetic  spirit 
has  grown,  in  certain  directions,  too  deliberately 
artificial.  And  directly  the  artifice  is  apparent,  the 
work  fails  in  its  workmanship.  The  perfection  of 
art  lies  in  the  harmony  of  subject  and  treatment, 
where  beauty  is  so  beautifully  expressed  that 
thought  and  expression  seem  inseparable. 

Poetry,  of  course,  can  never  be  the  popular 
form  of  literary  expression  ;  it  is,  in  its  essence, 
an  aristocratic  art,  and  it  does  well  to  set  up  its 
bulwarks  against  the  advance  of  democracy.  For 
whenever  poetry  has  been  given  over  to  the  ser- 
vices of  a  purely  popular  movement  it  has  always 
failed  to  preserve  its  dignity.  It  is  inevitably  in- 
fluenced by  main  currents  of  thought,  but  it 
never  espouses  the  feverish  causes  of  the  multi- 
tude without  loss  to  itself.  But  that  a  certain 
aristocratic  aloofness  is  by  no  means  inconsistent 
with  absolute  freedom  from  affectation  the 
example  of  the  most  distinguished  poets  of  every 
period  abundantly  proves.  Dignity  is  the  quality 
of  a  great  nature,  but  pose  is  the  travesty  of 
dignity  in  a  nature  that  is  small  and  narrow  ;  and 
it  is  not  always  easy,  at  a  casual  acquaintance,  to 
distinguish  the  true  quality  from  the  false. 
Students  of  contemporary  poetry,  however,  have 
a  sound  example  by  which  to  test  the  aristocracy 
of  art  in  the  dignified  and  exquisite  poetry  of 
Mr.  Robert  Bridges.  Slightly  austere,  standing 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  MR.  ROBERT  BRIDGES 

almost  deliberately  aloof  from  popular  devices, 
Mr.  Bridges  is  so  refined  a  workman,  so  delicate 
and  elaborate  in  finish,  as  almost  to  seem  amongst 
the  self-conscious  artificers  of  poetry.  But  famil- 
iarity with  his  work  will  assure  the  reader  of  its 
quintessential  artistry.  He  has  almost  no  affecta- 
tions ;  his  choice  of  the  exquisite  epithet  is  sure 
and  unforced  ;  he  is  absolutely  free  from  rhetor- 
ical effort  or  showy  effect ;  his  work  is  at  once 
simple  and  subtle,  undemonstrative,  and  of  glow- 
ing charm.  He  appeals  exclusively  to  the  trained 
lover  of  poetry,  and  this  has  kept  him  from 
anything  like  popular  acceptation,  but  he  has 
sustained  the  classical  spirit  in  a  period  essenti- 
ally unsympathetic  to  classical  simplicity,  and  his 
example  has  been  highly  healthful  and  beneficent. 
The  sustained  example,  over  a  long  period  of 
time,  of  two  poets  so  thoroughly  imbued  with  the 
classic  spirit  as  Mr.  Robert  Bridges  and  Mr. 
William  Watson,  has  been  of  very  real  formative 
value  to  the  receptive  mind  of  the  age,  and  Mr. 
Bridges  in  particular  has  held  to  the  highest 
traditions  of  his  art,  unmoved  by  any  of  those 
momentary  accessions  of  enthusiasm  and  in- 
dignation which  have  occasionally  tainted  Mr. 
Watson's  muse  with  an  infusion  of  the  spirit  of 
journalism.  It  is  a  good  sign  that,  after  long  and 
honourable  activity,  crowned  with  the  laurel  of 
public  recognition,  Mr.  Bridges  is  now  beginning 
to  find  followers  of  his  own  ;  for  Mr.  Laurence 
Binyon,  for  example,  promises  to  preserve  the 
apostolic  succession  with  no  uncertain  note.  And 
it  is  highly  important  for  the  future  of  poetry  that 
the  classical  tradition — the  tradition  of  dignity 
and  beauty  without  pose  or  affectation — should 

85 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

be  preserved  from  generation  to  generation,  since 
without  it  Poetry  has  considerable  dangers  to 
encounter. 

The  characteristic  tendency  of  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  has  been,  it  must  once  more  be  re- 
peated, towards  the  democratization  of  literature. 
The  spread  of  education  has  evolved  an  entirely 
new  public,  for  whom  literary  interest  of  some 
sort  or  other  has  to  be  provided  ;  a  public  gath- 
ered from  a  class  that  has  hitherto  read  nothing, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  it  had  not  learnt  how 
to  read.  The  temptation  is  naturally  great  for 
literature  to  direct  her  appeal  towards  this  vast 
and  noisy  multitude ;  material  success,  fame, 
and  popularity  are,  to  a  great  extent,  in  its  hands, 
and  ready  to  its  bestowal.  We  do  not  say  that 
there  is  not  still  as  large  and  as  select  a  body  of 
admirers  of  pure  literature  as  there  ever  was  ; 
but  it  is  indisputable  that  the  sudden  rise  of  this 
infinitely  larger  and  infinitely  more  insistent 
public  has  seriously  overwhelmed  the  voices  of 
literary  taste  and  judgment,  and  the  advantages 
of  the  wider  appeal  are  naturally  appreciated  by 
the  artist.  The  question  is,  Will  poetry  be  affected 
by  the  popularization  of  literature  ?  And,  if  so, 
what  course  will  it  take  ?  Poetry,  it  is  true,  is  not 
really  to  the  public  taste  ;  but  might  not,  perhaps, 
some  compromise  be  effected  with  the  austerer 
forms  of  art,  and  by  its  means  a  kind  of  poetry 
be  evolved,  which  should  indeed  have  its  relation 
to  true  poetic  principles,  and  yet  be  at  the  same 
time  popular  in  tone  and  topic  ? 

Some  such  compromise  seems  already  to  have 
been  achieved.  When  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling's 
vigorous,  tuneful,  and  vivacious  "  Barrack-room 
86 


MR.  RUDYARD  KIPLING 


Ballads  "  took  the  world  by  storm,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  there  was  a  single  critic  in  England  who 
was  not  more  or  less  carried  away  by  them.  Criti- 
cism, however  hesitating,  is  generally  inclined 
to  enthusiasm  over  something  new ;  and  here 
was  novelty  and  to  spare,  breathless,  virile,  full  of 
high  spirits,  and  essentially  British.  There  was 
humour,  there  was  real  power,  there  was  not  even 
lacking  a  broken  fugitive  sense  of  beauty,  as  in 
"  Mandalay,"  which  showed  that  this  surprising 
new  genius  was  not  entirely  a  spirit  of  fire.  But 
what  was  really  the  most  characteristic  and  sug- 
gestive quality  of  the  work  was  its  singular  adroit- 
ness in  weaving  into  the  fabric  of  verse  words, 
expressions,  and  phrases  of  the  very  scum  and 
off-scouring  of  the  language,  so  that  what  is 
rather  clumsily  called  "  actuality  "  seemed  wedded 
to  art  in  a  swinging  melody  which  every  ear  could 
catch,  embodying  a  sentiment  with  which  every 
man  could  sympathise. 

"  'E  rushes  at  the  smoke  when  we  let  drive, 

An'  before  we  know,  'e's  'ackin'  at  our  'ead  ; 
'E's  all  'ot  sand  an'  ginger  when  alive, 

An'  'e's  generally  shammin'  when  'e's  dead. 
'E's  a  daisy,  'e's  a  ducky,  'e's  a  lamb  ! 

'E's  an  injia-rubber  idiot  on  the  spree, 
'E's  the  on'y  thing  that  doesn't  give  a  damn 

For  a  Regiment  o'  British  Infantree  ! 

So  'ere's  to  you,  Fuzzy- Wuzzy,  at  your  'ome  in  the 

Soudan ; 
Your'e  a  pore  benighted  'eathen  but  a  first-class 

fightin'  man  ; 
An'  'ere's  to  you,  Fuzzy- Wuzzy,  with  your  'ayrick 

'ead  of  'air — 

You  big  black  boundin*  beggar — for  you  broke  a 
British  square  1 " 

8? 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

No  one  can  be  insensible  to  the  verve  of  such  a 
verse  as  this— -to  its  thoroughgoing  vitality,  its 
force,  its  sense  of  all-compelling  virility.  No  one 
can  question  Mr.  Kipling's  talent,  his  individual- 
ity, his  stake  in  contemporary  literature.  But, 
perhaps,  after  the  passage  of  years,  it  will  not  be 
reckoned  as  ingratitude  for  past  pleasure  if  we 
begin  to  appreciate  that  Mr.  Kipling's  influence, 
if  it  were  extended  indefinitely,  would  not  be 
altogether  salutary  to  the  progress  of  poetry.  His 
methods  are  elementary  ;  his  melodies  jingle  and 
jangle  ;  he  does  not  hesitate  (if  we  may  apply  a 
popular  phrase  to  a  popular  poet) "  to  play  down," 
when  there  is  a  point  to  emphasize,  to  all  but  the 
lowest  of  human  impulses.  Such  an  influence, 
popularly  accepted,  could  not  be  sound  either 
aesthetically  or  intellectually.  Indeed,  it  starves 
the  higher  ideals  at  the  expense  of  virtues  mainly 
superficial  and  animal. 

It  would  not  be  accurate  to  say  that  Mr.  Kip- 
ling has  had  much  direct  influence  upon  current 
poetry,  although  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there 
are  signs  that  his  example  is  making  its  way  under 
the  surface.  Of  the  purely  imitative  verse  that  is 
issued  in  such  large  quantities  every  year,  an 
astonishingly  large  proportion  is  inspired  by  the 
Kipling  tradition  and  disfigured  by  limping  trav- 
esty of  the  Kipling  manner.  Many  of  the  popular 
music-hall  songs — to  a  vast  public  the  only 
"  poetry  "  it  hears — are  modelled  on  the  same 
fashion  ;  and,  so  far  as  popularity  is  possible  to 
verse,  the  author  of  "  The  Seven  Seas  "  is  un- 
questionably the  popular  poet  of  the  time.  And, 
if  poetry  were  now  to  be  democratized,  it  would 
certainly  be  through  his  example.  Indeed  the 
88 


POETRY   AND   REALISM 


most  democratic  note  in  recent  poetry,  as  em- 
bodied in  the  vigorous  talent  of  Mr.  John 
Masefield,  undoubtedly  owes  to  Mr.  Kipling's 
innovation  that  license  in  the  use  of  phrase  and 
imagery  which  often  threatens  to  submerge  a 
very  sensitive  personality  in  the  sloughs  and 
marshes  of  bare  realism.  Without  Mr.  Kipling's 
example,  Mr.  Masefield  would  scarcely  have 
written  certain  violent  passages  in  "  The  Ever- 
lasting Mercy,"  and  it  may  be  questioned 
whether  the  younger  poet  has  deserved  altogether 
well  of  his  art  in  the  effort  to  better  his  instruction. 
It  is  highly  improbable,  however,  that  any 
radical  decline  into  realism  will  have  much  effect 
upon  the  most  aristocratic  form  for  literature  ; 
and  a  reference  to  the  history  of  poetical  enthus- 
iasms in  the  past  does  not  encourage  one  to  think 
that  an  influence  of  this  kind  can  be  very  lasting 
or  very  penetrating.  It  is  the  privilege  of  poetry 
that,  though  its  phases  are  poignantly  affected 
by  main  currents,  it  recovers  very  quickly  from 
purely  temporary  influences,  and  that  there  is 
never  wanting  a  reaction  against  any  tendency 
in  a  perilous  direction.  What  is  called  the  Im- 
perial spirit  in  politics  may  be,  and  doubtless  is, 
the  political  movement  of  the  future  ;  but  it  is 
not  a  movement  that  appeals  very  insistently  to 
the  service  of  art,  and  it  cannot  be  said  to  have 
much  affinity  with  poetic  enthusiasm.  And  the 
reason  that  we  have  not  recently  undergone  any 
marked  poetical  movement  is  undoubtedly  this  : 
the  ideals  and  interests  of  the  last  thirty  years 
have  been  so  increasingly  material  that  poetry 
has  turned  aside  from  them  into  contemplation 
and  self-concern.  Upon  this  line  there  was  little 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

to  add  to  the  achievements  of  the  past ;  and  so 
an  air  of  indecision  and  vacillating  experiment 
has  prevailed,  to  the  prevention  of  progress. 
Typical  of  the  uncertain  balance  of  the  time,  for 
example,  is  a  poet  of  the  calibre  of  W.  E.  Henley, 
who,  possessed  of  a  strenuous  individuality  and 
personal  force,  was  yet  at  one  time  revealed  as 
an  uncompromising  realist,  at  another  as  an 
almost  sentimental  idealist ;  and  who,  while  he 
had  moods  which  declared  him  a  modern  of 
moderns,  still  reserved  his  most  constant  loyalty 
for  the  ideals  of  the  Tudor  period  and  the  adven- 
turous life  of  the  swashbuckler.  So,  too,  Mr. 
Stephen  Phillips,  a  poet  whose  early  work  was 
marked  by  much  promise  and  not  a  little  power, 
ranges  indecisively  through  various  fields,  and 
touches  at  one  moment  the  unrest  of  modernity, 
only  to  turn  at  the  next  to  a  class  of  poetic  drama 
which,  whatever  its  individual  traits,  is  both  in 
ideal  and  interest  widely  removed  from  con- 
temporary influence.  Mr.  Alfred  Noyes,  whose 
metrical  experiments  have  been  among  the  most 
interesting  features  of  the  younger  poetry  of  the 
day,  suggests  very  much  the  same  problem.  The 
barrel-organ  on  the  city  kerb,  or  the  tired  resig- 
nation of  modern  scepticism,  are  less  character- 
istic of  his  interests  than  his  frank  and  frequent 
plunges  into  the  golden  deep  of  Elizabethan 
romance.  The  cares  of  the  present  seem  insuffi- 
ciently inspiring,  but  in  the  sky  above  the 
Muses'  Hill  there  rides  "  a  fleet  of  stars,"  where 
one  may  still  track  the  course  of  the  giants  of  old, 
as  their  imaginations  range  from  pole  to  pole. 

Under  the  circumstances  of  the  present  time, 
this  tendency  to  revert  from  topical  themes  can 
90 


THE  SPIRITUAL  SANCTUARY 

scarcely  be  considered  a  shortcoming.  Great 
enthusiasm  will  evoke  high  poetry,  and  the  future 
seems  only  too  likely  to  provide  its  own  inspir- 
ation. Without  immediate  stimulus,  the  culti- 
vation of  the  art  is  best  pursued  along  traditionary 
paths,  and  the  pursuit  is  soon  found  to  be  its  own 
reward.  Indeed,  it  would  not  be  surprising  to  find 
that  the  tendency  of  poetry  may  in  the  future 
become  more  and  more  retiring  and  remote  ; 
and  that,  instead  of  attempting  to  reflect  a  national 
ambition  that  is  growing  increasingly  material, 
poetry  will  seek  rather  to  provide  an  anodyne 
and  a  corrective  to  the  feverish  energy  of  its 
generation.  Even  the  drums  of  war  are  unable 
to  silence  this  suspicion  ;  for  martial  poetry  soon 
wastes  its  force,  and  the  soul  of  man  retires  once 
more  upon  some  purely  spiritual  sanctuary.  But 
to  follow  this  path  is  to  venture  into  the  danger- 
ous thickets  of  prophecy,  where  criticism  is 
always  likely  to  lose  her  way.  Sufficient  unto  the 
day  is  the  evidence  thereof ! 

Victorian  poetry,  we  said  at  the  outset,  was 
neither  gay  nor  buoyant ;  but,  as  a  nation  grows 
to  maturity,  there  are  more  fitting  qualities  for 
her  literature  than  light-heartedness  and  childish 
vigour.  And  the  poetry  we  have  thus  briefly 
considered  should  leave  us  with  associations  very 
sincere  and  very  intimate,  since  it  was  the  ex- 
pression of  natures  which  felt  deeply  and  saw 
far.  As  life  grows  more  complex  in  a  crowded 
community,  its  expression  becomes  naturally 
more  nervous  and  intricate  ;  and,  of  the  many 
moods  to  which  a  modern  man  is  subject,  there 
is  perhaps  none  which  he  will  fail  to  find  reflected 
in  some  quiet  corner  of  the  poetry  of  his  time. 

9* 


SOME  MOVEMENTS  IN  VICTORIAN  POETRY 

To  say  this  is  to  say  of  poetry  all  that  contem- 
porary criticism  could  demand  ;  and  for  that 
"  final  judgment  "  which  the  future  is  to  pro- 
nounce, we  must  leave  the  last  word  to  those  who 
will  be  further  removed  from  it  in  sympathy, 
and  so  better  able  to  judge  it  dispassionately. 
And  yet  it  is  fairly  safe  to  surmise  that  the  last 
word  will  never  be  said  ! 


92 


FICTION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 

THE  history  of  the  novel  during  the  past 
century  differs  from  the  histories  of  every 
other  form  of  literature  in  one  important 
particular.  In  poetry,  criticism,  and  the  drama 
literary  tradition  was  established  and  crys- 
tallised long  before  1800 ;  henceforth  there 
might  be  developments  and  side  issues,  but  the 
dominant  principles  of  these  arts  could  scarcely 
be  disturbed.  With  the  novel  the  case  was  en- 
tirely different.  Narrative  fiction  has  indeed 
played  its  part  in  English  literature  from  the 
beginning,  and  from  Malory  and  Sidney  to  Nash 
and  Defoe  had  brought  forth  noble  names  and 
glittering  performances  ;  but  it  was  not  until 
Richardson  published  "  Pamela  "  that  the  modern 
novel  of  character  found  a  home  in  England  ; 
and  English  fiction,  as  we  understand  it  to-day, 
was  but  sixty  years  old  at  the  opening  of  the 
century.  Sixty  years  is,  indeed,  a  long  period  in 
the  age  of  the  individual,  but  in  the  history  of 
literary  development  it  is  still  a  part  of  childhood, 
and  at  the  outset  of  our  inquiry  we  find  the  modern 
novel  no  more  than  beginning,  as  it  were,  to  find 
its  feet.  The  period  was  one  of  great  interest  and 
movement.  The  forces  of  the  French  Revolution, 
spreading  themselves  on  this  side  of  the  Channel, 
were  arousing  fresh  intellectuality.  Literature  was 
no  longer  to  be  the  privileged  possession  of  Wills' 
and  White's  ;  it  was  to  be  democratized  for  the 
advantage  of  a  new  and  imperative  public.  The 

93 


FICTION  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

drama  had  declined  ;  poetry  had  suffered  for 
nearly  a  hundred  years  at  the  hands  of  artifice  ; 
the  sudden  stream  of  ideas  demanded  some  new 
form  of  expression.  What  more  natural  than  that 
the  popular  taste  should  swoop  down  upon  that 
actual  and  nervous  art  in  which  Fielding  and 
Smollett  had  already  pictured  contemporary  life 
with  such  vigorous  fidelity  ?  The  demand  was 
for  humanity,  the  study  of  ideas  in  life  ;  and  it 
was  satisfied  in  the  modern  novel. 

With  the  very  commencement  of  the  century 
the  novel  assumes  its  two  main  aspects,  developed 
in  two  separate  talents  of  radiant  excellence  ;  for 
the  first  names  to  meet  us  are  those  of  Jane  Austen 
and  Sir  Walter  Scott.  It  has  indeed  been  the 
singularly  good  fortune  of  the  modern  novel  that, 
with  all  its  traditions  to  make,  it  has  made  them 
at  once,  without  hesitation  or  false  start ;  and  the 
first  names  of  the  present  century  are  among  its 
greatest.  The  genius  of  Jane  Austen  is  without 
spot  or  blemish.  Standing,  as  the  truest  artist 
will  always  stand,  outside  her  characters,  she  looks 
them  through  and  through  with  piercing  infalli- 
bility. Her  field  may  not  be  as  wide  as  universal 
nature,  but  it  includes  almost  every  passion  in 
the  heart  of  man,  and  she  regards  the  changeful 
and  unstable  emotions  of  humanity  with  kindly 
satire  and  critical  sympathy.  Moreover,  she  set 
a  brilliant  and  most  healthful  example  to  her 
successors.  Sweeping  away  the  sentimental  and 
sensational  methods  of  Mrs.  RadclirTe,  Charlotte 
Dacre,  Agnes  Musgrave,  and  the  crowd  of  folly, 
she  wrote  with  clear  and  nervous  restraint  the 
record  of  actual  life.  Side  by  side  with  her  stands 
Scott,  the  father  of  modern  romance.  With  him 

94 


JANE  AUSTEN  AND  WALTER  SCOTT 

prose-fiction  was  a  second  love  ;  and  in  his  aband- 
onment of  verse  as  the  vehicle  of  his  Scottish 
romances,  we  see  more  clearly  the  gradual  ten- 
dency of  narrative  towards  a  prose  expression. 
"  Waverley "  appeared  three  years  later  than 
"  Sense  and  Sensibility,"  and  with  its  immediate 
and  overwhelming  vogue  the  fiction  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  blossoming  from  every  branch. 
Chivalric,  humorous,  adventurous,  humane,  Scott 
revived  the  national  interest  in  history,  and  per- 
petuated the  manly  types  of  the  middle  ages.  His 
fingers  may  not  be  always  closed  upon  the  pulse 
of  motive,  his  exuberant  imagination  may  some- 
times play  havoc  with  proportion,  but  the  gor- 
geous procession  of  heroic  figures  and  noble 
escapades  sweeps  through  his  pages  in  a  pageantry 
of  splendour.  And  he,  too,  with  his  pervading 
popularity,  cleared  the  ground  of  pinchbeck 
sensation  and  elementary  melodrama. 

Scott's  vogue  in  the  novel  was  even  greater 
than  in  poetry,  and  the  glamour  of  Byron  soon 
took  the  town  by  storm,  almost  obscuring  the 
glories  of  "  Marmion  "  and  "  Rokeby."  It  was 
natural  that  the  Byron  movement  should  affect 
the  novel  too,  and  the  "  bigoted  and  truculent 
dandies  "  were  not  to  leave  fiction  untouched. 
Nowadays  we  do  not  greatly  read  the  stories  of 
Benjamin  Disraeli  and  Bulwer  Lytton,  but  in 
their  day  they  were  immensely  popular.  Com- 
posed half  of  vain  foppery  and  half  of  incisive  wit, 
they  rose  above  the  level  of  their  surroundings 
in  moments  of  individuality,  but  oftener  sank 
beneath  it  in  over-decoration  and  efflorescence. 
They  remain  interesting  rather  as  a  picture  of  the 
time  than  as  a  contribution  to  literary  development. 

95 


FICTION  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

The  influence  of  Scott,  which  they  momentarily 
diverted,  has  long  outlived  them.  In  England 
it  lingered  on  in  the  turgid  tales  of  William 
Harrison  Ainsworth,  and  is  always  reappearing. 
In  France  it  assumed  new  vitality  in  the  dashing 
talent  of  Alexandre  Dumas,  whose  spirited  and 
illimitable  imagination  was  second  only  to  that 
of  his  great  English  master,  and  followed  very 
close  upon  his  prowess. 

Meanwhile,  the  gradual  but  widening  influ- 
ences of  the  English  novel  were  issuing  in  a  genius 
peculiarly  popular  and  essentially  British.  The 
democratization  of  literature  reaches  its  apex  in 
Charles  Dickens,  who  has  been  perhaps  the  most 
powerful  and  permeating  literary  influence  of  the 
century.  It  is  no  wonder  that  he  should  have  been 
so  ;  for  he  is  the  sublimation  of  the  Victorian 
citizen.  In  that  marvellously  diverse  and  luxur- 
iant genius  of  his,  the  sentiment,  humour, 
optimism,  fear,  and  aspiration  of  his  time  find 
complex  and  sympathetic  expression.  He  pos- 
sesses, as  Taine  perceived,  the  talent  of  a  repre- 
sentative English  painter  ;  his  energy  for  detail 
is  equalled  only  by  his  wealth  of  interwoven 
colour.  Above  all,  he  has  sincere  and  impeccable 
appreciation  of  the  ideals  and  prejudices  of  the 
ordinary  Englishman;  he  embodies  his  age,  and 
expresses  it  with  admirable  and  sensitive  par- 
ticularity. If  his  sentiment  is  sometimes  drowned 
in  sentimentality,  his  humour  marred  by  grotes- 
querie,  these  are,  after  all,  the  foibles  of  his  time. 
He  takes  a  quality  or  a  vice  and  works  it  into  a 
character  ;  the  leaven  spreads  till  the  character 
is  no  longer  a  human  being,  but  an  embodied 
tendency,  like  one  of  Marlowe's  Deadly  Sins. 
96 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARLES  DICKENS 

But  it  was  precisely  thus  that  the  early  Victorian 
conscience  was  played  upon  most  readily  ;  he 
knew  his  public,  and  he  filled  it  to  the  full.  The 
spirit  of  Dickens  permeates  the  literature  of  his 
time.  With  natural  qualifications,  it  reappears 
in  Lever,  in  Lover,  in  Samuel  Warren,  in  Douglas 
Jerrold,  and  even  in  Marry  at.  A  sudden  wave  of 
high-spirited  middle-class  optimism,  drenched 
in  a  foam  of  caricature,  overwhelms  the  coast ; 
for  ten  years  fiction  is  almost  entirely  given  over 
to  the  dominant  genius  of  Dickens. 

There  was  bound  to  be  a  reaction,  and  in  due 
time  it  came,  starting  apparently  upon  the  Con- 
tinent. Early  in  the  century  Stendhal  had  prepared 
the  way  for  it,  microscopically  analysing  the 
passions  through  a  glass  of  superficial  naturalism  ; 
and  now  the  movement  of  modern  realism  centred 
itself  in  the  similar,  but  divergent,  talents  of 
George  Sand  and  Honore  de  Balzac.  In  George 
Sand,  idealist  with  her  gaze  upon  reality,  the 
inspiration  passed  from  a  passion  for  social  en- 
thusiasms to  the  study  of  humble  and  idyllic 
humanity.  In  Balzac,  realist  with  a  heart  of 
romance,  it  took  the  form  of  eager  but  laborious 
examination  of  motive,  an  examination  wide  in 
its  humanitarian  sympathy,  and  conducted  by  a 
student  of  mankind,  whose  actuality  was  always 
illumined  by  broken  shafts  of  imagination.  The 
talents  of  the  two  writers  were  diverse,  but  they 
pursued  the  same  aim.  Life  was  to  be  viewed,  as 
under  the  eye  of  Jane  Austen,  with  uncomprom- 
ising fidelity ;  sentimentalism  and  buffoonery 
were  to  be  set  aside  ;  the  heart  of  man  was  to  be 
displayed  naked  and  without  shame.  And  so  in 
England,  That  easy-going  conception  of  the  order 

97  H 


FICTION  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

of  things  which  ended  every  novel  with  lovers 
united  in  marriage,  and  the  prospect  of  illimitable 
progeny,  was  suddenly  shocked  and  revolution- 
ised by  the  voices  of  two  women  from  a  country 
parsonage.  In  Charlotte  and  Emily  Bronte  the 
passions  were  suddenly  revealed,  romantic, 
sombre,  and  importunate  ;  life  was  pictured  as  a 
stormy  midnight  scene  under  flashes  of  fitful 
lightning.  And  the  world  had  scarcely  made  up 
its  mind  how  to  treat  this  sudden  apparition  of 
feminine  revolt,  when  another  sensation  swept  it 
off  its  feet.  William  Makepeace  Thackeray  was 
no  novice  in  letters  when  "  Vanity  Fair  "  sprang 
into  the  light ;  but  it  was  only  then  that  he  was 
discovered  as  an  invigorating  and  disturbing 
influence.  He  was,  indeed,  no  revolutionist ;  but, 
if  Dickens  was  the  child  of  his  age,  Thackeray 
was  its  critic,  and  the  false  sentimentality  of  the 
time  found  itself  one  morning  wittily  rebuked  by 
an  acute  and  cynical  study  of  nature.  Thackeray 
is  a  very  complex  figure,  difficult  to  fix,  and  harder 
still  to  analyse.  By  no  means  the  cold  cynic  he 
has  been  sometimes  represented,  he  stood  rather 
as  the  sympathetic  spectator  of  the  follies  of  the 
day,  removed  from  them  by  intuitive  wisdom, 
yet  always  presenting  to  them  the  geniality  of  a 
tender  critic  and  candid  friend.  He  modelled 
himself  on  Fielding,  and  inherited  something  of 
his  master's  art  both  in  construction  and  in 
presentation  ;  but  he  was  related  always  to  his 
time,  and  has  left  us  the  most  permanent  picture 
of  its  characteristics.  He,  too,  was  followed  by  a 
school,  not  of  imitators,  but  of  disciples.  In 
Charles  Reade,  dauntless  opponent  of  social  evils  ; 
in  Mrs.  Gaskell  and  Mrs.  Craik,  conscientious 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THACKERAY 

and  intimate  observers  of  simple  life  ;  and  in 
Anthony  Trollope,  the  voluminous  painter  of  the 
English  country  home,  the  determination  to  see 
things  as  they  are,  and  to  portray  them  without 
prejudice,  survived  and  flourished  with  the  ordered 
grace  of  a  British  garden.  In  America,  too,  the 
same  flowers  of  sincerity  and  charm  were  grow- 
ing. The  genius  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  in- 
comparably the  first  of  American  novelists, 
combined  in  a  rare  degree  the  qualities  of  realism 
and  romance,  and  sustained  true  observation 
side  by  side  with  imaginative  fervour  and  idyllic 
susceptibility.  The  tradition  thus  maintained  has 
done  much  to  protect  the  modern  novel  from  a 
decline  into  permanent  eccentricity. 

Such  quiet  methods,  however,  were  not  to 
remain  unchallenged,  and  the  search  after  truth 
of  motive  and  accuracy  of  delineation  has  gone 
far  since  Thackeray.  Upon  the  continent  Balzac 
was  followed  by  Flaubert,  and  in  England  "  Adam 
Bede  "  was  the  successor  of  "  Vanity  Fair."  In 
"  Madame  Bovary  "  and  "  L 'Education  Senti- 
mentale "  the  new  realistic  movement  joined 
hands  with  naturalism.  Middle-class  life  was 
depicted,  not  with  the  genial  hopefulness  of 
Dickens,  but  with  all  its  angularities  emphasised, 
its  false  gods  upon  the  hearthstone.  In  "  Adam 
Bede  "  a  like  elaboration  of  detail,  laborious  but 
selective,  showed  that  the  English  mind  was  not 
unaffected  by  French  method.  George  Eliot  was, 
next  to  Dickens  and  Thackeray,  the  most  promi- 
nent talent  of  her  age,  and  in  her  own  day  she 
enjoyed  both  the  privileges  and  the  perils  of  a 
literary  prophetess.  By  nature  a  woman  of  ex- 
quisite sensibility,  rich  and  distinctive  in  emotional 

99 


FICTION  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

power,  she  grew,  with  the  increase  of  her  repu- 
tation, too  self-conscious  an  artist  and  too  deliber- 
ate a  preacher.  But  her  influence  was  broad  and 
humane  ;  it  served  its  time  well  with  fidelity  to 
life  and  sincerity  of  purpose,  and  her  earlier  books 
will  outlive  the  sense  of  weariness  from  which 
the  recollection  of  her  later  assumptions  of 
philosophy  has  scarcely  yet  broken  free. 

Up  to  the  death  of  George  Eliot  it  is  possible  to 
trace  a  certain  clear  course  of  development  in  the 
novel,  to  follow  certain  inter-related  and  inter- 
acting movements.  But  the  literature  of  the  last 
twenty  years  of  the  century  is  still  too  close  to  us  for 
criticism  to  say  precisely  whither  the  modern  novel 
with  its  multifarious  interests,  is  tending,  or  what 
is  to  be  its  next  predominating  development. 
Indeed,  during  those  last  twenty  years  the  activity 
of  our  novelists  has  been  so  increasingly  com- 
plicated and  confused  that  it  becomes  difficult 
to  believe  that  any  main  current  exists  among 
the  "  shorn  and  parcelled  "  waterways.  A  few 
conspicuous  figures,  however,  stand  out  in  high 
relief.  George  Meredith  sustained,  with  noble 
integrity  of  aim,  the  best  traditions  of  the  novel 
of  character  and  national  life,  irradiating  his 
stories  with  the  sense  of  vigorous  vitality,  and 
preserving  in  them  the  unity  of  purpose  and 
the  animating  psychological  idea,  which  are 
the  infallible  signs  of  sound  workmanship.  Mr. 
Thomas  Hardy,  like  George  Eliot  the  historian 
of  bucolic  life,  interpreted  the  heart  of  primitive 
humanity  in  its  intimate  relation  to  the  heart 
of  nature.  For  culture,  seriousness,  and  dis- 
tinction of  style,  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  must  also 
be  counted  among  George  Eliot's  successors.  The 
100 


THE  MANY  VOICES  OF  FICTION 

mantle  of  romanticism  fell  on  no  unworthy 
shoulders  when  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  was  still 
among  us,  and  the  enthusiastic  will  believe  that 
there  are  not  wanting,  among  the  younger  gener- 
ation, talents  that  promise  to  fill  his  vacant  and 
lonely  throne.  Nor  has  the  increase  of  political 
and  imperial  responsibility  lacked  literary  ex- 
pression. Few  novelists  have  taken  the  field  with 
so  instant  and  far-reaching  a  success  as  that  which 
has  acclaimed  the  peculiarly  British  vigour  of  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling's  soldier-stories.  He  is,  indeed, 
the  most  conspicuous  figure  among  the  new- 
comers of  the  last  decade  ;  emphatic,  impetuous, 
militantly  aggressive,  he  has  given  voice  to  the 
contemporary  passion  for  national  acquisition  and 
international  power.  A  modern  of  the  moderns, 
his  is  the  trumpet-call  of  the  young  ambition  of 
his  time  ;  its  possibilities  and  dangers  alike  are 
clearly  mirrored  in  his  stirring  talent.  For  the 
rest,  the  most  representative  fiction  of  the  time 
has  probably  come  to  us  from  abroad.  In  Tur- 
genev  and  Tolstoy  we  have  learnt  to  appreciate 
a  realism,  not  naturalistic,  but  sincere,  filling  the 
stage  with  figures  of  infinite  variety  and  com- 
plexity ;  and  employing  all  these  figures  to  the 
development  of  a  central  and  dominant  idea. 
This  movement  is  seen  to  be  as  nearly  as  possible 
simultaneous  throughout  Europe,  and  in  certain 
countries  it  assumes  a  shape  both  menacing  and 
uncouth.  In  Scandinavia  it  emerges  in  the  militant 
enthusiasm  of  Bjornson  :  in  France  it  splits  into 
two  channels,  following  a  course  of  unselecting, 
laborious  exactitude  in  Emile  Zola,  and  in  Guy  de 
Maupassant  issuing  in  a  cynical  humour,  an 
exquisite  manner,  and  an  underlying  melancholy 
101 


FICTION  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

both  touching  and  persuasive.  In  Italy  the  move- 
ment crystallises  in  Gabriele  d'Annunzio,  lyrical, 
impassioned,  and  unstable,  whose  characters 
drift  helplessly  through  a  world  that  has  cast  away 
the  claims  of  honour  and  dignity.  And  in  our  own 
way  we,  too,  in  England  have  had  our  passing 
movement  of  naturalism,  tangled  and  absorbed 
among  a  complication  of  literary  interests,  half- 
perceived  and  early  abandoned,  but  still  in  its 
hour  sufficiently  marked  and  unfortunately  per- 
vading. It  has  spent  itself  now,  and  English  fiction 
seems  again  to  be  lost  in  a  very  wilderness  of 
indecision.  Tacking  from  topic  to  topic,  viewing 
nothing  steadily  or  long,  tortured  by  problems  of 
misunderstanding  and  ignorance,  its  progress 
seems  for  the  moment  to  evade  the  eye  of  criticism 
altogether.  Out  of  all  this  chaos  we  can  but  hope 
that  some  unity  may  come,  when  feverish  emotions 
have  cooled  down  into  enthusiasm. 

December,  1900. 


102 


THE  PARTICULAR  COPY 

THERE  are  many  orders  of  book  lovers, 
and  it  is  one  of  the  peculiar  privileges 
of  the  passion  that,  wisely  enjoyed,  it 
needs  absolutely  no  external  assistance.  To  be  a 
fancier  of  old  china  or  rare  poultry  one  needs,  to 
start  with,  a  well-filled  purse,  and  unless  the  china 
be  genuinely  old  and  the  feathered  fowl  unques- 
tionably unique,  these  pursuits  have  no  further 
recompense.  They  stand  or  fall  upon  achievement. 
With  the  book  lover  fortunately  it  is  a  different 
affair.  To  be  sure,  there  are  bibliophiles  and 
bibliographers,  first  editions  and  coveted  "L.P.'s", 
and  the  tenth  commandment  may  still  be  broken 
in  the  reading-room  of  the  British  Museum  by 
those  who  have  the  heart  for  such  rarities.  There 
are  some,  however  (and  I  like  to  reckon  myself 
among  them),  to  whom  such  anxious  interests 
appear  a  distraction  and  a  snare.  And,  surely,  in 
any  case  they  are  inessential.  The  secret  of  a  book 
is  not  contained  in  the  lifeless  thing  of  leaves  and 
covers  ;  your  Aldine  and  your  Elzevir  tell  me  no 
more  than  this  handy  reprint  of  the  "  Temple 
Classics  "  ;  it  is  the  heart,  the  heart  of  the  book 
that  I  want.  I  am  afraid  of  your  Persian  decoration, 
Riviere,  Zaehnsdorf,  and  Cobden  Sanderson ! 
I  want  a  book  for  my  pocket  and  for  the  fields. 
It  is  a  sunny  autumn  morning  ;  the  young  breeze 
calls  me  to  the  open  road  and  the  woodside  ; 
there  is  need  of  a  companion,  but  he  must  be, 
like  myself,  rough  and  ready.  Plain  clothes  and 
an  honest  face  ;  and  so  we  start  upon  our  journey. 
103 


THE  PARTICULAR  COPY 


And  yet  for  every  bookman  there  must  be  a 
special  form  of  every  book,  a  "  particular  copy  " 
which  speaks  its  own  language.  Only — and  here 
I  part  with  the  bibliomaniac — it  must  be  a  book 
that  has  personal  memories,  not  associations  of 
the  catalogue — a  book  that  is  "  mine  by  a  peculiar 
right,  and  by  an  emphasis  of  interest  mine." 
Personal  association — that,  indeed,  is  the  secret 
of  all  attraction,  even  of  love.  How  often  we  come 
across  an  old  couple  who  have  lived  their  life  out 
together  ;  their  appearance  may  be  homely,  their 
conversation,  to  a  younger  and  more  buoyant 
taste,  heavy  and  uninspiring  ;  yet  they  seem  to 
find  infinite  resource  in  one  another.  So  should 
a  bookman  stand  with  regard  to  his  treasures. 
This  very  ordinary  Herrick — a  reprint  not  sixty 
years  old — why  should  I  choose  it  before  all  the 
principes  of  Great  Russell  Street  ?  Because  it 
was  my  "  first  "  ;  because  I  remember  the  morn- 
ing I  first  attacked  it — a  schoolboy  home  for  his 
holidays  ;  because  I  know  where  every  poem  in 
it  lies,  even  at  what  line  the  page  must  be  turned, 
and  why  there  is  candle-grease  across  the  second 
verse  of  "  Daffodils,"  and  a  broad  ugly  stain  upon 
the  cover.  Tiny  matters,  inconsequent  details, 
and  yet  the  life  of  one  book,  and — of  one  reader. 
I  speak,  then,  to  the  humble  bookman,  who  must 
make  up  in  true  affection  what  he  lacks  in  opu- 
lence, and,  remembering  Chaucer's  "  Clerke  of 
Oxenforde,"  I  am  inclined  to  believe  him  the 
truest  student  of  them  all.  Are  there  not,  upon 
the  shelves  of  such  a  one,  a  hundred  volumes  that, 
like  Prospero,  he  would  prize  above  a  dukedom  ? 
— books  that  bring  back  the  savour  of  the  days 
that  are  no  more.  For  one  it  may  be  the  memory 
104 


SHERBORNE  AND  NEW  COLLEGE 

of  a  twilit  window-seat  in  a  grey  school-library, 
a  vision  of  cricket  flannels,  and  pads  thrown  care- 
lessly aside,  a  brief  half-hour  snatched  between 
the  fall  of  a  wicket  and  the  ringing  of  a  supper 
bell.  I  know  /  have  one  such  book,  bartered  of 
the  librarian  for  a  new  copy,  and  bearing  still  its 
number  and  its  badge  !  Or,  is  it  an  Oxford  quad, 
that  arises  to  the  mind's  eye,  a  scudding  storm, 
and  a  triad  of  young  book-lovers  about  a  fire — 
cigarettes,  pipes,  and  a  voice  reading  aloud  and 
broken  by  occasional  comment  ?  Or,  again,  an 
old  book-shop  in  Holborn,  and  one  standing 
before  it,  fingering  a  much-needed  half-crown  ;  a 
moment's  indecision,  a  plunge  into  the  shadowy 
recesses,  and  a  rapid  departure  homewards  to 
devour  a  treasure  more  appetizing  than  the  re- 
linquished lunch  ?  There  are  other  "  particular 
copies,"  too,  before  which,  even  with  the  least 
sentimental,  the  eye  grows  dimmer,  the  tone 
more  reverent : 

"  Because  the  names  upon  the  fly-leaf  there 
Are  mine — and  hers." 

Are  not  these  landmarks  also,  or,  it  may  be  rather, 
signposts,  pointing  to  the  paths  we  did  not  take  ? 
And  it  is  just  as  well,  sometimes,  in  moments  of 
over-confidence,  to  remember  the  partings  of  the 
ways. 

But,  after  all,  these  are  accidentals,  and,  in 
spite  of  memories,  the  "  book's  the  thing."  There 
may  be  sentiment  and  recollection  about  a  yellow 
novel  or  a  Bradshaw,  but  to  the  true  bookman 
it  is  essential  that  the  memory  should  be  worthy 
of  the  book,  the  book  of  the  memory.  And  such 
is  the  excellent  ordinance  of  the  library,  that  the 

105 


THE  PARTICULAR  COPY 


two  influences  generally  work  together,  and  the 
books  we  love  best  for  memory's  sake  are  apt  to 
be  the  best,  too,  in  themselves.  It  was  their  own 
haunting  and  abiding  impression  that  created  the 
memory,  and  it  is  still  the  passage,  the  line  that  re- 
calls the  recollection.  In  the  very  charming  poem 
cited  a  few  lines  back,  "  E.  Nesbit  "  describes, 
with  great  felicity,  the  peculiar  fidelity  of  books — 

"  You  don't  find  railway  novels  where  you  left 
your  Elzevirs." 

And  what  is  true  of  the  rare  edition  is  equally 
true  of  the  "  particular  copy."  In  the  library, 
as  in  the  salon,  one  is  for  ever  making  new 
friends ;  fresh  shelves  have  to  be  contrived, 
fresh  faces  accommodated,  but  in  both  alike  the 
old  are  not  only  better,  but  more  enduring.  Come 
to  think  of  it,  you  rarely  quarrel  with  an  old  friend ; 
momentary  flashes  of  impatience  there  may  be, 
passing  inequalities  of  temperament ;  but  the 
accumulated  wealth  of  association  and  under- 
standing is  on  the  old  friend's  side,  and  nothing 
can  really  upset  it.  So  it  is  with  books.  You  go  into 
the  study  in  the  dusk  ;  lettering  and  colour  are 
alike  indiscernible  ;  the  hand  alone  can  discrim- 
inate the  form.  Yet  you  know  where  every  favoured 
volume  lies,  can  pick  it  from  its  place,  and  return 
into  the  lamplight  without  fear  of  disconcertment. 
These  are  the  friends  one  seeks  in  life,  the  friends 
that  can  always  be  found. 

There  is  one  sort  of  "  particular  copy  "  that 
one  loves  to  look  upon,  ventures  even  to  handle, 
but  would  scarcely  desire  to  possess.  I  mean  the 
copy  of  a  great  book  which  belonged  to  a  great 
man.  To  one  lover  of  Tennyson,  at  least,  it  seemed 
within  the  most  sacred  fitness  of  things  that  the 
1 06 


BOOKS  OF  THE  MIGHTY  DEAD 

oak  which  closed  upon  his  majestic  features 
should  have  closed  also  upon  that  copy  of  Shakes- 
peare from  which  he  read  in  the  moonlight  almost 
in  the  moment  of  his  death.  Thereafter,  who 
would  be  willing  to  turn  its  pages  ?  "  Who  is 
sufficient  for  these  things  ?  "  And  those  many 
volumes,  shown  in  many  places  under  glass,  from 
which  the  immortals  read,  which  they  carried 
about  with  them  into  the  lanes  and  streets  of  the 
cities — their  sanctity  seems  actually  to  justify 
the  very  abomination  of  a  glazed  covering.  One 
stands  before  them  as  before  a  shrine.  These  are, 
as  it  were,  part  of  the  mysteries  of  the  book-lover, 
and  no  man,  I  think,  who  truly  reverenced  the 
great  would  dare  to  handle  them  with  easy  fingers. 
They  have  their  message,  though,  and  their  con- 
solation. Soiled  and  fingered,  torn,  and  even 
singed  with  the  midnight  candle,  they  remind  us 
that  the  great  have,  like  ourselves,  known  the 
charm  of  the  "  particular  copy,"  and  that  the 
sympathy  among  bookmen  is  eternal. 

To  them,  of  course,  the  influence  was  more 
potent,  in  that  a  book  was  a  rarer  possession  than 
it  is  now,  and  acquired  by  more  strenuous  self- 
denial.  Nowadays  everyone  can  get  together  a 
library,  and  works  that  had  to  be  sought  for 
diligently  in  the  "  shilling  box  "  through  many 
drizzling  afternoons  of  disappointment  can  now 
be  bought  in  dainty  forms  at  every  bookseller's 
in  every  provincial  town.  One  hopes  that  the 
plenty  will  not  end  in  inertia,  that  the  facility  of 
gaining  a  copy  will  not  warp  the  delights  of  the 
"  particular  copy."  Certainly,  the  modern  book- 
man must  face  the  risks  of  his  privilege  ;  three 
shelves  of  "  classics,"  all  equipped  in  a  single 
107 


THE  PARTICULAR  COPY 


uniform,  can  never  have  the  same  attraction  as 
the  motley  regiment — a  very  Falstaff's  army,  all 
shapes,  all  sizes — which  we  recruited  with  so 
much  labour  of  brain  and  foot  in  the  winding 
alleys  of  our  youth.  But  our  inquiry  grows  too 
curious,  too  pessimistic  to  boot.  At  heart  the 
bookman  never  changes.  What  he  was  in  Chaucer's 
time  he  remains  to-day  ;  and,  whether  he  repair 
to  Mr.  Bain  or  to  Mr.  Dent,  the  pleasures  of  his 
pursuit  will  never  greatly  vary.  Personal  posses- 
sion, personal  association — these  secrets  will 
attend  just  as  closely  upon  the  reprints  of  the 
future  as  upon  the  editions  of  the  past ;  there 
will  still  be  the  same  caressing  touch  upon  the 
fading  cover,  the  same  closing  of  the  hand,  the 
same  disinclination  to  lend.  For  indeed,  no  man 
lends  the  "  particular  copy  "  ;  to  ask  it  of  him 
were  to  beg  too  much  of  even  the  least  selfish  of 
friendships.  "  My  friend,"  so  would  he  answer, 
"  my  very  dear  friend,  I  have  at  your  disposal 
my  hand,  my  purse,  board,  bed,  and  a  god-speed 
on  the  morrow  ;  but  the  '  particular  copy  '  of 
my  favourite  book  I  have  neither  for  you,  nor  for 
another.  It  speaks  to  me  in  a  language  of  its  own. 
'Tis  part  and  parcel  of  my  life  of  lives,  and,  in  the 
dark,  expected  moment,  when  my  eyes  can  no 
longer  read  its  lines,  I  shall  hear  it  whispering  to 
me  in  the  dusk,  and  welcoming  me  from  its  place 
upon  the  other  side  of  death." 


1 08 


THE  MOOD  AND  THE  BOOK 

IT  is  rather  a  strange  thing — but  observation 
assures  one  of  its  truth — that  comparatively 
few  people  understand  that  in  reading,  as  in 
every  other  pursuit  worth  pursuing,  there  is  room 
for  the  practice  of  art.  Nowadays  we  are  all  utili- 
tarian rather  than  artistic  ;  and  it  is,  perhaps, 
because  so  few  people  know  how  to  read  that  we 
are  gradually  ceasing,  as  the  literary  journals 
perpetually  remind  us,  to  be  a  nation  of  book- 
lovers.  Every  man  who  knows  his  letters  thinks 
he  can  read  ;  and  the  portly  financier  who  sits 
opposite  you  in  the  railway  carriage  every  morn- 
ing, deep  in  columns  of  stocks,  would  smile  with 
indulgent  contempt  if  you  assured  him  that  from 
end  to  end  of  the  year  he  never  reads  intelligently 
at  all — reads,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  only  way  that 
reading  is  worth  while — the  only  way  that  leaves 
an  effect  beyond  the  moment.  Still,  one  scarcely 
expects  Throgmorton  Street  to  be  literary,  and 
the  art  of  reading  would  not  be  worth  discussing 
at  all  among  one's  books  and  bookmen  friends, 
were  it  not  that  many  of  the  sincerest  lovers  of 
literature  seem  to  miss  the  full  enjoyment  that 
springs  from  a  book  chosen  to  fit  a  mood,  and  a 
mood  chiming  in  exact  harmony  with  a  book. 
The  mood  and  the  book  !  The  time,  and  the  place, 
and  the  loved  one  all  together  !  This  is  the  true 
secret,  the  true  art,  of  reading,  and  in  its  kind 
its  charm  is  unsurpassable.  Only  to  attain  to  it  is 
difficult. 

All  prt  i^  #  matter  of  selection  ;  and,  above 
109 


THE  MOOD  AND  THE  BOOK 

all  things,  the  art  of  reading  depends  on  choice. 
But,  just  as  the  maiden  in  her  first  season  fails  to 
know  her  own  mind,  however  much  she  is  herself 
convinced  to  the  contrary,  so  the  untrained  reader 
is  ignorant  of  what  he  wants,  is  incapable  of 
choosing  the  book  which  he  is  ripe  to  enjoy.  I 
know  a  man,  a  true  lover  of  poetry  if  ever  there 
was  one,  who  will  go  out  into  the  fields  on  a  blue 
spring  morning,  and  read  Wordsworth's  "  Ode 
on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality  "  in  the  open 
air,  full  of  the  belief  that  this  is  the  one  way  to 
appreciate  it.  And  I  believe  that  nine  people  out 
of  ten  would  agree  with  him  ;  possibly,  indeed, 
they  are  right.  Yet  I  remain  unconvinced.  The 
open  country,  where  "  the  young  lambs  bound 
as  to  the  tabor's  sound,"  with  the  springing  sod 
beneath  me,  and  the  carolling  lark  above — here 
is,  perhaps,  the  one  place  and  the  one  moment 
in  which  I  do  not  want  to  read  that  immortal 
paean  of  spring,  in  which  it  seems  for  the  hour 
unnecessary,  for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  in- 
evitable. Poetry,  said  its  author,  is  emotion 
remembered  in  tranquillity ;  if  that  be  so,  reading, 
too,  should  surely  be  governed  by  the  same 
sentiment.  To  enjoy  the  portrayal  of  an  emotion, 
whatever  the  form  of  art,  we  must  be  for  the 
moment  free  of  it  in  our  own  selves.  If  you  are 
labouring  under  loss,  you  do  not  want  to  see  the 
Antigone  ;  and  it  is  when  we  are  without  trouble 
ourselves  that  we  are  best  able  to  sympathize 
with  the  less  fortunate.  Emotion,  in  a  word, 
works  by  contrast ;  and  since  reading  is  essen- 
tially the  arousing  of  an  emotion,  it  is  largely 
dependent  upon  the  selection  of  contrasted  and 
antithetic  moods.  The  man  who  is  without  a 
no 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  CONTRAST 

sense  of  contrast  is  without  imagination  also  ; 
and  to  lack  imagination  is,  intellectually,  to  be 
dead  already.  And  in  some  form  or  other  imagi- 
nation survives  in  almost  every  healthy,  working 
intellect.  To  look  at  the  thing  in  its  lightest  aspect, 
we  all  remember  Calverley's  city  clerk  at  the  sea- 
side, how  he  sat  him  down  upon  the  yellow  sand, 
between  the  sun  and  moon  upon  the  shore  : 

"  And  thought  how,  posted  near  his  door, 
His  own  green  door  on  Camden  Hill, 
Two  bands  at  least,  most  likely  more, 
Were  mingling  at  their  own  sweet  will 

Verdi  with  Vance.  And  at  the  thought 
He  laughed  again,  and  softly  drew 

That  Morning  Herald  that  he'd  bought 
Forth  from  his  breast,  and  read  it  through." 

Well,  that  is  the  Cockney  reduction  to  absurdity 
of  my  little  theory  of  contrast,  and  it  is  so  violent 
that  it  almost  seems  to  wreck  it  with  burlesque. 
And  yet  consider  the  human  nature  of  the  thing  ! 
Consider  how  the  reader  revelled  in  the  familiar 
stocks  ;  in  the  railway  accident  at  London  Bridge, 
"  whereby  many  City  men  were  delayed  for  an 
hour  at  the  busiest  time  of  the  morning"  ;  and 
how  every  item  gained  in  relish  from  the  sense 
that  for  a  fortnight  he  was  free  of  it  all !  He  chose 
a  homely  medium,  it  is  true,  but  he  appreciated 
the  value  of  contrast ;  and  I  am  not  sure  but  that 
he  went  down  to  his  house  justified  rather  than 
my  friend  who  needs  the  chorus  of  nature  about 
him  before  he  can  be  at  one  with  Wordsworth  ! 

Of  course  one  does  not  want  to  labour  the  point 
of   contrast ;  literature    is    not    entirely    "  allo- 
pathic," as  Harley  Street  might  say.  The  mourner 
in 


THE  MOOD  AND  THE  BOOK 

must  still  return  to  In  Memoriam,  and  the  armies 
of  the  future  will  doubtless  march  into  action  to 
the  music  of  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling.  But  that 
well-worn  Greek  audience,  which  fined  Phry- 
nichus  for  moving  it  to  tears,  understood  better 
than  most  of  us  that  man  lives  by  the  reaction  of 
moods  alone.  The  child,  too,  seems  to  understand 
it  better  than  a  man.  In  a  familiar  passage  Ruskin 
declares  that,  if  a  young  girl  is  turned  loose  in  a 
library,  she  will  inevitably  choose  only  such  books 
as  are  healthful  to  her.  In  the  matter  of  girlhood 
Ruskin  was  an  optimist ;  and  one  fears  that  in 
these  days  of  "  feminine  culture "  the  con- 
fidence is  a  little  too  enthusiastic.  But  it  is  cer- 
tainly true  that  boys  and  girls,  running  riot  among 
their  father's  books,  do  manage  with  wonderful 
felicity  to  pick  out  the  book  that  suits  the  mood. 
Youth  has  no  affectations  ;  it  never  reads  what 
it  does  not  care  about ;  and  it  derives  immense 
enjoyment  and  stimulus  from  the  book  that 
pleases  it.  Somehow,  the  richer  shelves  of  maturity 
do  not  always  seem  to  add  to  that  pleasure  quite 
in  the  proportion  that  they  should.  It  may  be 
that  many  interests  blunt  the  emotions,  that  "  he 
who  increaseth  knowledge  increaseth,"  if  not 
"  sorrow,"  at  least  confusion,  and  that  when  the 
moods  become  more  complex  it  is  more  difficult 
to  find  the  books  that  fit  them.  Certainly,  in  the 
art  of  reading,  there  are  some  things  that  never 
return,  "  some  first  affections,  some  shadowy 
recollections,"  which  can  never  be  recaptured. 
They  come  like  a  flood  of  light  across  the  country- 
side in  spring  ;  every  bush  and  every  tree  falls 
into  relief,  and  the  wood  beyond  is  woven  with 
mysterious  hollows.  So,  when  first  the  mood  and 
112 


THE  MOODS  OF  THE  ELECT 

the  book  join  hands,  in  the  golden  spring  of  boy- 
hood, life  seems  flooded  with  new  meaning,  a 
great  wonder  breaks  in  upon  us  ;  we  lift  up  our 
eyes  unto  the  hills,  and  we  know  that  the  world 
is  good.  And  oh  !  if  only  those  emotions,  those 
evasive,  tremulous  moods  could  be  restored  to 
us  !  But  they  pass  with  the  light  step  and  the 
careless  laugh,  and  the  thoughts  of  man  are  grey, 
grey  thoughts  ! 

It  may  be,  then,  that  for  pure  enjoyment  the 
man  of  few  books  is  to  be  envied,  just  as  the  man 
of  few  moods  seems  to  come  most  easily  through 
the  tangle  of  existence.  But  the  moods  must  be 
strong  ;  and  the  books,  need  one  add  ?  must  be 
of  the  elect.  Perhaps  not  even  a  hundred  "  best 
books  "  are  necessary  to  a  liberal  education  : 
one  has  known  men  of  natural  literary  culture 
who  were  probably  on  intimate  terms  with  fewer. 
For  the  elect  have  always  their  moods  ;  you  never 
turn  to  them  in  vain  ;  they  mourn  to  you,  they 
pipe  to  you,  you  may  weep  or  dance  at  will.  But 
what  is  one  to  say  for  the  dreary  multitude  of 
books  poured  forth  every  week  from  these  weary 
presses  of  Britain,  books  whose  very  existence 
seems  staked  on  the  boast  that  they  have  no  mood 
for  any  one  ?  Worse  still  are  the  magazine  and 
the  popular  pennyworth  of  home  chatter.  It  is 
said  that  the  cheap  periodical  is  killing  the  book 
in  England  ;  if  there  is  any  truth  in  it,  it  is  a 
wretched  outlook.  For  the  newest  form  of  maga- 
zine seems  designed  solely  for  the  killing  of  moods ; 
it  snaps  its  cheap  information  at  you  like  a  pistol, 
with  a  "  Stand  and  deliver  "  intonation  which 
annihilates  thought ;  it  is  nothing  for  two  pages 
together ;  it  makes  mocks  and  mows  like  a  dancer 
113  I 


THE  MOOD  AND  THE  BOOK 

in  a  booth,  and  it  leaves  you  exhausted  without 
the  satisfaction  of  having  been  entertained.  It 
is  produced  by  those  who  lack  imagination  for 
the  better  suppression  of  imagination  in  others, 
and  it  promises  to  be  fatal  to  the  play  of  the  idea. 
Promises — but,  let  us  hope,  will  fail  of  its  effect. 
Surely  we  shall  not  be  contented  with  it  for  long. 
It  seems  impossible  that  the  coming  generation 
will  not  return  upon  itself — return,  too,  to  the 
pleasant  pastures  of  pure  literature.  The  very 
violence  of  the  change  must  end  in  reaction  ; 
restlessness  cannot  be  a  permanent  mood,  even 
with  the  young.  But  never  more  than  now  was  it 
the  duty  of  those  of  us  who  care  for  literary 
tradition,  and  believe  in  the  incalculable  power  of 
books  to  humanize  and  recreate — never  was  it 
more  our  duty  to  do  what  we  can  to  hold  to  what 
is  restful  and  sure  in  letters,  and  to  repress  what 
is  restless  and  vain.  Life  is  made  up  of  emotion  ; 
it  is  by  literature  that  emotion  is  most  subtly 
aroused.  There  is  the  mood,  and  there  is  the  book. 
Shall  they  not  work  together  to  the  perfecting  of 
the  little  while  that  is  given  us  for  toil  and  for 
enjoyment  ? 


114 


CONCERNING  ANTHOLOGIES 

IT  is  small  wonder  that  the  number  of  anth- 
ologies should  be  increased  with  every  season, 
since  the  passion  for  making  them,  so  far 
from  being  a  merely  literary  "  fad,"  has  its  roots 
at  the  very  heart  of  human  nature.  In  one  way  or 
another,  we  are  all  collectors,  and  the  desire  to 
group  together  in  a  single  volume  our  favourite 
passages  of  poetry  and  prose  is  at  least  as  old  as 
the  illuminated  manuscripts  of  the  monasteries. 
Moreover,  in  the  generation  immediately  pre- 
ceding our  own  this  taste  was  particularly  luxur- 
iant ;  and  the  first  anthologies  of  the  current 
fashion  may  be  found  in  those  albums  of  our 
grandmothers,  of  which  every  family  preserves 
a  few,  where  the  melodies  of  Moore  and  the  lyrical 
fervours  of  Mrs.  Hemans  are  engrossed  in  the 
neatest  and  most  angular  of  calligraphy.  And 
nowadays,  when  everything  that  is  written  and 
collected  seems  to  find  its  way  sooner  or  later  into 
print,  nothing  is  more  natural  than  that  every  man 
or  woman  of  letters  should  be  represented  by  his 
or  her  own  particular  anthology,  as  a  sort  of  sign- 
manual  of  taste  and  erudition.  The  custom  has  also 
conspicuous  advantages,  for  even  the  most  capri- 
cious collection  must  needs  contain  many  indis- 
putable jewels,  and  for  these  there  can  never  be  too 
many,  nor  too  frequent  readers.  Nothing  maintains 
the  standard  of  taste  so  effectually  as  the  currency 
of  a  sound  and  comprehensive  corpus  poetarum, 
which  indeed  corrects  the  judgment  by  the  fruit- 
ful use  of  example,  a  method  which  proverbially 

"5 


CONCERNING  ANTHOLOGIES 

excels  a  whole  library  of  precept.  Speaking 
generally,  therefore,  it  may  be  said  with  justice 
that  there  can  scarcely  be  too  many  of  these  aids 
to  culture,  and  that  the  more  deeply  they  pene- 
trate into  the  leisure  reading  of  the  student,  the 
more  thoroughly  will  his  appreciation  for  what 
is  best  in  literature  be  fostered  and  developed. 

All  this  is  true  enough,  but  at  the  same  time 
there  are  risks  and  responsibilities.  "  The  antho- 
logist's," says  Sir  Arthur  Quiller  Couch  in  one 
of  the  very  best  of  these  collections,  "  is  not  quite 
the  dilettante  business  for  which  it  is  too  often 
and  ignorantly  derided  "  ;  and  if  (though  that  is 
difficult  to  believe)  this  sensitive  art  has  ever  been 
treated  with  derision  at  all,  it  can  only  have  been 
so  by  the  pens  of  the  most  casual  and  unintelligent 
scribblers.  For  the  art  of  anthology  demands,  in 
fact,  the  most  delicate  exercise  of  the  critical 
faculty;  and,  if  there  is  anything  to  be  said 
against  its  multiplication,  the  blame  must  lie 
rather  with  the  easy  and  confident  manner  in  which 
it  is  sometimes  assumed,  than  with  any  lack  of  diffi- 
culty in  its  performance.  Ease  and  self-confidence 
are,  indeed,  the  very  worst  qualifications  for  the 
task,  for  the  labour  of  selection  and  arrangement 
demands  continual  application  and  readjustment 
of  judgment.  Nor  is  it  probable  that  any  single 
anthology  was  ever  prepared  which  would  alto- 
gether satisfy  a  jury  of  twelve  experienced  critics  ; 
personal  predilection  and  association  play  so 
large  a  part  in  judgment  that  there  must  always 
be  omissions  and  inclusions  which  will  arouse 
question.  And  the  chief  danger  of  the  anthologist 
is  this,  that,  feeling  the  impossibility  of  satisfying 
every  one,  he  should  be  too  easily  content  with 
116 


THE  GOLDEN  TREASURY 


merely  satisfying  himself,  without  testing  those 
predilections  and  discounting  those  associations 
which  are  always  menacing  sound  criticism.  For 
it  must  be  remembered  that  there  is  a  real  re- 
sponsibility in  giving  to  the  second-rate  the 
popular  currency  of  association  with  the  first- 
rate,  and  that  the  general  injustice  which  is  done 
to  the  public  taste  by  obscuring  the  distinctions 
of  first-  and  second-rate  is  even  more  to  be  con- 
sidered than  the  individual  injustice  which  may 
be  done  to  a  doubtful  writer  by  excluding  what 
might  possibly  have  passed  muster  under  a  rather 
generous  latitude  of  choice.  Caprice,  whether  of 
choice  or  of  rejection,  is  the  cardinal  sin  of  the 
anthologist ;  and  it  can  only  be  avoided  by  the 
persistent  application  of  a  high  and  undeviating 
standard. 

Palgrave's  standard,  for  instance — the  measuring 
rod  of  "  The  Golden  Treasury  " — could  scarcely 
be  improved  upon.  "  That  a  poem,"  he  writes, 
"  shall  be  worthy  of  the  writer's  genius — that  it 
shall  reach  a  perfection  commensurate  with  its 
aim — that  we  should  require  finish  in  proportion 
to  brevity — that  passion,  colour,  and  originality 
cannot  atone  for  serious  imperfections  in  clear- 
ness, unity,  or  truth,  that  a  few  good  lines  do  not 
make  a  good  poem,  that  popular  estimate  is 
serviceable  as  a  guide-post  more  than  as  a  com- 
pass— above  all  that  excellence  should  be  looked 
for  rather  in  the  Whole  than  in  the  parts — such 
and  other  such  canons  have  been  always  steadily 
regarded."  How  excellent  this  is  !  How  compre- 
hensive and  how  clearly  correct  in  judgment ! 
Indeed,  its  correctness  is  so  clear  that  at  first 
sight  it  may  appear  to  be  almost  obvious.  The 
117 


CONCERNING  ANTHOLOGIES 

anthologist,  we  might  argue,  who  sets  out  with 
any  less  appreciation  of  his  task  is  scarcely  to  be 
reckoned  with  at  all.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  appre- 
ciate a  principle  and  another  to  sustain  it ;  and 
any  one  who  is  at  the  pains  to  follow  the  vagaries 
of  current  criticism,  in  the  periodicals  and  reviews, 
will  soon  discover  that  even  the  best  judgment  is 
hourly  disfigured  by  caprices  which  would  scarcely 
be  possible,  if  a  sound  standard  of  excellence  were 
inculcated  in  anthologists,  and  maintained  by  the 
traditions  which  they  subserve. 

In  the  task  of  selection,  it  must  be  remembered, 
an  author  may  reckon  either  historically  or  abso- 
lutely ;  and  this  is  what  Palgrave  meant  when  he 
insisted  that  a  poem  must  be  considered  in  its 
relation  to  its  writer's  genius.  There  may  be,  for 
example,  a  poem  of  Milton  which  would  serve 
as  the  highest  standard  of  selection  ;  but  it  is  not, 
therefore,  to  be  argued  that  every  poem  by  every 
other  writer  which  falls  short  of  that  standard  is 
excluded.  This,  indeed,  is  sufficiently  clear ; 
there  is  but  one  Milton,  and,  in  his  own  peculiar 
excellence,  he  is  unsurpassed.  But  there  are  results 
of  this  principle  which  lie  less  on  the  surface.  It 
follows  that  there  may  be,  and  are,  poems  of 
Milton  excellent  in  relation  to  the  great  body  of 
English  poetry,  but  less  excellent  as  measured  by 
Milton's  own  high-water  mark,  which  are  less 
worthy  of  inclusion  than  other  poems  by  writers 
of  inferior  capacity,  who  count  historically  in 
their  relation  to  the  development  of  English  verse. 
And  it  is  here  that  the  exercise  of  the  anthologist's 
judgment  becomes  most  sensitive  ;  it  is  here  that 
the  dangers  of  caprice  are  most  insistent. 

Take   Gray,   for   example  ;  he   is,   indeed,   a 

118 


THE  STANDARD  OF  SELECTION 

typical  difficulty.  Gray  lies  midway  between  the 
artificial  magnificence  of  the  Augustan  poets  and 
the  radiant  simplicity  of  the  Lake  School ;  he 
echoes  the  one  and  heralds  the  other,  and  he  is 
not  free  from  the  defects  of  both.  But  the  "  Elegy 
in  a  Country  Churchyard  "  counts  for  an  immense 
influence  historically,  and  in  its  relation  to  Gray's 
genius  it  counts  for  everything.  To  exclude  such 
a  poem  from  a  representative  anthology,  on 
grounds  of  homeliness  of  sentiment,  would  be  as 
grave  a  caprice  as  to  write  off  the  "  Rape  of  the 
Lock  "  from  the  records  of  poetry  because  of  its 
over-decoration  and  mythological  artificiality. 
Each  poem  is  unsurpassed  of  its  class  and  period, 
and  in  both  cases  class  and  period  alike  were 
fruitful  of  poetic  progress.  And  yet  a  good  deal 
has  been  said  by  a  certain  school  of  aesthetic  re- 
finement for  resigning  the  "  Elegy  "  to  the  ranks 
of  mediocrity. 

This,  then,  is  what  one  means  by  the  caprice 
of  the  anthologist ;  and  it  is  even  more  harmful 
for  what  it  includes  than  for  what  it  excludes. 
For  the  public  taste  is,  or  ought  to  be,  largely 
influenced  by  the  imprimatur  of  a  popular  collec- 
tion ;  and  every  inferior  piece,  which  such  a 
collection  preserves,  tends  to  debase  that  taste. 
It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  general 
taste  is  naturally  vicious,  and  that  in  these  days 
of  rampant  journalism  it  is  vitiated  more  and  more 
every  morning  by  the  perpetuation  of  false  stand- 
ards. The  inferior  piece,  once  admitted,  is  by  the 
persistency  of  natural  selection  fastened  upon  at 
once  for  favouritism  ;  and  half  the  influence  of 
the  good  is  dissipated  by  the  bad.  There  is  an 
admirable  collection  of  the  love-poetry  of  the 
119 


CONCERNING  ANTHOLOGIES 

language,  edited  by  a  living  poet  of  distinction 
and  judgment,  which,  nevertheless,  contains  one 
piece  of  unquestionable  inferiority,  both  technical 
and  spiritual.  This  is,  in  fact,  but  a  single  blot 
upon  a  brilliant  page  ;  and  yet,  such  is  the  per- 
sistency with  which  poetry  avenges  herself  upon 
false  selection,  that  one  frequent  student  of  that 
little  volume  can  regretfully  declare  that  he  never 
opens  the  book  without  lighting  upon  the  one 
inferiority,  and  never  closes  it  without  its  recol- 
lection remaining.  So  may  one  pitted  speck  in 
the  garnered  fruit  rot  inwardly  and  corrupt  the 
taste  ! 

But  the  art  of  the  anthologist  does  not  end  with 
selection.  There  remains  the  important  matter 
of  arrangement ;  and  this  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
generally  neglected.  The  easy  method  is  that  of 
historical  succession  ;  but  it  is  by  no  means  the 
best.  Indeed,  to  see  its  abuse  in  full  swing,  we 
have  only  to  turn  to  Professor  Arber's  laborious 
series,  in  which  each  volume  is  supposed  to  repre- 
sent the  era  of  a  single  poet,  with  the  result  that 
the  whole  series  overlaps  and  intersects  with 
bewildering  intricacy.  Here,  again,  Palgrave  set 
a  rich  example,  though  one  beset  with  difficulty  to 
a  less  abundant  capacity.  The  poems  in  "  The 
Golden  Treasury  "  are  arranged  with  a  sense  of 
continuity  and  interrelation  so  delicate  that  the 
taste  passes  from  poem  to  poem  with  perpetual 
refreshment  and  stimulation.  Palgrave 's  critical 
faculty  and  sympathy  are  here  shown  at  work 
upon  a  method  which  many  critics  would  pass 
over  as  unimportant,  but  which  in  effect  lends  to 
the  best  anthology  in  the  language  a  harmony  of 
note  and  sentiment  unapproached  for  charm  and 
120 


THE  HARMONIES  OF  TIME 

significance.  And  as  the  field  for  selection  widens, 
it  is  to  be  hoped  that  his  method  may  be  revived 
and  perpetuated.  For  by  this  juxtaposition  of 
interests  one  poet  is  made  to  illustrate  another, 
one  poem  to  strike  fire  from  its  neighbour,  and 
the  splendid  continuity  of  English  verse  is  dis- 
played in  its  perfection. 

Here,  indeed,  is  the  peculiar  merit  of  the 
anthology  ;  it  shows  us  that  the  poet  stands,  not 
alone,  but  as  one  of  a  goodly  company,  separated, 
it  may  be,  by  circumstances  of  time  and  event, 
but  united  in  the  maintenance  of  literary  tradition 
and  national  character.  And  there  are  many  poets 
who  show  to  greater  advantage  as  members  of  a 
band  than  as  disconnected  units,  many  whose 
value  and  influence  are  best  appreciated  in  relation 
to  their  universal  brotherhood.  To  indicate  that 
value  and  influence,  and  to  trace  the  harmony  of 
poetic  development,  are  the  principal  tasks  of  the 
conscientious  anthologist.  Then,  while  his  work 
preserves  the  harmony,  what  a  rich  and  inspirit- 
ing companion  it  makes.  The  day  of  the  literary 
worker  should,  if  it  is  well  arranged,  include,  in 
its  modest  way,  an  hour  for  most  things  that  have 
the  literary  interest  at  heart ;  and  there  should 
always  be  an  hour  for  the  companionship  of  the 
anthology.  And,  if  a  "  personal  view  "  may  be 
held  to  justify  a  personal  confession,  it  may, 
perhaps,  be  added  that  one  eager  reader  of  every 
new  anthology  has  found  for  himself  an  hour 
when'its  charm  is  never-failing.  For  the  crowded 
hours  of  the  day's  work  we  need,  perhaps,  more 
actual  interests ;  literary  history,  literary  criticism, 
the  great  creations  of  fiction  and  the  drama,  move 
with  us  through  the  period  of  busy  activity, 
121 


CONCERNING  ANTHOLOGIES 

suggesting,  instructing,  enlarging  the  active  and 
practical  sympathies.  But  when  the  stir  of  the 
working  day  is  over,  what  calmer  and  more 
penetrating  pleasure  has  literature  to  offer  her 
children  than  the  silent  hour,  by  a  dying  fire,  with 
some  treasure-house  of  English  poetry  open  upon 
the  knees  ?  Old  influences  begin  to  stir  in  the 
broken  light ;  old  ideals  awaken  from  the  flutter- 
ing pages. 

"  The  old  earth  rings  with  names  that  cannot  die  ; 
The  old  clouds  come  to  colour  in  the  sky." 

Spenser,  Drayton,  Drummond,  Carew,  Herrick, 
Crashaw,  Vaughan,  Collins,  and  Gray — the 
Golden  Pomp  of  English  Poetry  passes  before 
the  tired  eyes.  Here  is  the  majestic  form  of 
Shakespeare,  at  ease  in  the  shadows  of  Arden  ; 
blind  Milton  touches  once  more  the  organ-stops 
of  eternal  music  ;  Dryden's  "  twin-coursers  " 
sweep  by  in  a  panoply  of  triumph.  And  so  to  the 
open  fields  with  Wordsworth,  to  the  glimmering 
waves  with  Coleridge,  to  the  dizzy  height  of  the 
lark  with  Shelley  :  we  taste  in  an  hour  all  the  joys 
of  Nature,  and  are  made  one  with  her  illimitable 
voice.  Visions  and  voices  like  these  make  pilgrim- 
age with  us  through  the  darkness,  and  call  us  to 
fresh  hope  and  energy  with  the  expected  morning. 


122 


SKETCHES  FOR  PORTRAITS 


RICHARD  CRASHAW 

THE  fate  of  St.  John  the  Baptist  has 
overtaken  many  of  his  disciples,  and 
there  is  something  at  once  noble  and 
pathetic  in  that  true  service  which  is  content  to 
act  as  a  fore-runner,  and  to  leave  the  fruits  of  its 
labour  to  those  that  come  after.  Much  of  the  best 
work  of  the  world  has  been  done  in  this  way. 
As  Moses  leads  the  children  of  Israel  through  the 
wilderness,  but  is  himself  denied  his  entry  to  the 
promised  land,  so  John  the  Baptist  prepares  the 
way  of  the  Lord,  but  dies  in  prison  before  the 
revelation  of  immortality.  And  history  affords 
many  such  beaconing  figures — pioneers  of  a  larger 
hope,  who  saw  into  a  future  whose  privileges  they 
were  not  to  share,  although  they  themselves  had 
spent  their  lives  in  making  the  world  ready  to 
receive  it. 

Some  such  halo  of  promise  and  unfulfilment 
invests  the  poetry  of  Richard  Crashaw,  establish- 
ing its  author  as  a  type  of  very  penetrating  interest. 
He  stands,  as  it  were,  lonely  in  a  crowd  ;  the  fore- 
runner of  movements,  literary  and  religious, 
which  have  since  grown  into  dimensions  he  could 
never  have  conceived.  The  main  facts  of  his  life 
are  fairly  familiar.  The  son  of  a  Puritan  divine, 
he  was  drawn,  while  yet  a  Cambridge  under- 
graduate, into  the  "  High  Church  "  renascence 
which  centred  round  Laud  : 

"  Poor  grey  old  little  Laud, 
Dreaming  his  dream  out  of  a  perfect  Church." 

125 


RICHARD  CRASHAW 


When  Cambridge  was  handed  over  to  the  Parlia- 
mentarians, Crashaw  was  ejected  from  his  fellow- 
ship at  Peterhouse,  and  fled  to  Oxford,  then  even 
more  than  later,  the  last  home  of  "  lost  causes 
and  impossible  loyalties."  There  he  sheltered  for 
a  while  ;  but  with  Naseby  came  the  break-up  of 
all  that  he  held  most  sacred.  He  crossed  to  Paris, 
and  changed  his  religion  with  his  country.  Rome 
received  him  gladly,  and  in  her  service  he  spent 
what  was  left  to  him  of  a  short  and  troubled  life. 
He  died  at  the  Loretto  Monastery  in  his  thirty- 
seventh  year. 

Alike  in  life  and  literature,  he  holds,  as  it  were, 
an  intermediary  position.  He  was  the  only  one 
of  the  English  religious  poets  of  his  time  to  leave 
his  own  Church,  and  his  attitude  is  an  inevitable 
reaction  against  the  sweeping  changes  of  the 
Reformation.  He  was  a  mystic  and  an  ascetic,  for 
whom  the  Church  of  England  at  that  hour  had 
but  little  sympathy  or  consolation.  He  is  the  first 
of  that  brave  and  earnest  company,  of  whom 
Wesley  and  Newman  are  by  different  paths  the 
most  conspicuous  leaders,  and  for  whom  the 
Anglican  Church  must  always  feel  a  chastened 
regret.  In  literature  also  he  marks  a  new  depar- 
ture. He  was  born  during  the  last  years  of  Shakes- 
peare's life,  and  while  he  was  yet  a  boy  the 
magnificent  chorus  of  Elizabethan  poetry  began 
to  fade  away.  The  golden  years  of  inspiration 
were  over  ;  poetry  was  no  longer  the  breath  of 
the  atmosphere  ;  artifice  was  henceforth  to  take 
the  place  of  art.  In  a  word,  the  artist  had  almost 
inevitably  to  become  self-conscious  ;  in  place  of 
a  style  that  was  of  the  essence  of  his  work,  he  had 
once  more  to  make  a  style  for  himself. 
126 


THE  PIONEER  OF  CATHOLIC  POETRY 

So  among  the  poets  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
Crashaw  may  be  called  the  first  deliberate  "stylist," 
and  the  debt  which  his  successors  owed  to  him 
was  indeed  immense.  Milton  would  seem  to  have 
borrowed  from  him  ;  Pope  certainly  did  so  with 
open  hands  ;  Young  drew  largely  on  his  sacred 
poems  for  his  own  "  Night  Thoughts,"  and 
Coleridge  admitted  frankly  that  Crashaw's  "Hymn 
to  St.  Teresa  "  was  rarely  out  of  his  memory 
when  he  was  writing  the  second  part  of  "  Chris- 
tabel."  His  influence  has  extended,  indeed, into  our 
own  time,  and  no  reader  of  Francis  Thompson's 
poetry  can  fail  to  see  that  it  is  often  modelled  with 
singular  felicity  upon  Crashaw's  jewelled  lines. 

So  much  may  be  said  very  briefly  for  Crashaw's 
place  in  the  progress  of  poetry  ;  meanwhile  the 
work  itself  invites  the  full  attention  of  the  curious. 
It  is  in  all  essentials  the  natural  poetry  of  a  pioneer. 
Its  faults,  and  they  are  serious,  are  the  faults 
rather  of  its  artistic  isolation  than  of  any  radical 
defect  in  the  poet  himself.  He  was,  we  have  said, 
breaking  new  ground  ;  he  was  by  stress  of  in- 
fluence forced  out  of  simplicity,  and  the  natural 
result  was  that  his  style  became  vitiated  with 
conceits.  Some  of  these  are,  indeed,  intolerable  ; 
there  are  times  when  he  seems  deliberately  to 
defy  bathos  and  to  outrage  taste.  His  lines  upon 
Our  Lord's  choice  of  a  sepulchre,  for  example, 
are  tortured  with  ingenuity  like  a  riddle. 

"  How  life  and  death  in  Thee 

Agree  ! 
Thou  hadst  a  virgin  womb 

And  Tomb. 
A  Joseph  did  betroth 
Them  both." 
127 


RICHARD  CRASHAW 


And  no  one,  of  course,  can  forget  the  couplet, 
pilloried  by  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse,  as  "  perhaps 
the  worst  lines  in  all  English  poetry,"  in  which 
the  Magdalen's  eyes  are  likened  to  : 

"  Two  walking  baths,  two  weeping  motions, 
Portable  and  compendious  oceans." 

Such  vagaries  are  unspeakable  :  but  Crashaw 
has  had  to  answer  for  them  long  enough.  They 
are  largely  due  to  an  effort,  excellent  in  intention, 
but  often  thwarted  in  practice — an  effort  towards 
originality  of  literary  expression.  There  are  many 
of  them,  indeed,  in  Crashaw,  but  there  are  many 
more  beauties  :  and,  when  at  his  best,  Crashaw 
is  as  simple  as  the  purist  could  desire  : 

"  Thou  with  the  Lamb,  thy  Lord,  shalt  go, 
And  wheresoe'er  he  sets  his  white 
Steps,  walk  with  him  those  ways  of  Light, 
Which  who  in  death  would  live  to  see, 
Must  learn  in  life  to  die  like  thee." 

Or,  if  secular  poetry  be  preferred,  there  is  the 
familiar  "  Wishes,"  so  often  mutilated  by  anth- 
ologists, with  its  cumulative  and  haunting  re- 
iterations : 

"  Life  that  dares  send 
A  challenge  to  his  end, 
And  when  it  comes  say — Welcome,  friend  !  " 

Or,  "  Love's  Horoscope,"  one  of  the  finest  love- 
poems  in  the  language  : 

"  O,  if  Love  shall  die,  O  where — 
But  in  her  eye,  or  in  her  ear, 
In  her  breath,  or  in  her  breast, 
Shall  I  build  this  funeral  nest  ? 
While  Love  shall  thus  entombed  lie, 
Love  shall  live,  although  he  die. 
128 


THE  FATE  OF  THE  FORERUNNER 

It  is  the  fate  of  the  pioneer  that  the  credit  generally 
goes  with  his  followers,  who  march  over  his  work 
into  fuller  fruition.  We  see  Crashaw,  on  his  knees, 
"  under  Tertullian's  roof  of  angels,  there  making 
his  nest  more  gladly  than  David's  swallow  near 
the  house  of  God  "  ;  and  we  forget  that  he  is  the 
forerunner  of  that  small  but  devoted  body  of 
English  Churchmen  who  roused  religion  from 
the  apathy  of  the  eighteenth  century  into  the 
strenuous  and  sincere  anxieties  of  the  last  fifty 
years.  But  here,  as  in  the  music  and  rich  metrical 
diversity  of  his  poetry,  he  was  a  pioneer  of  good 
things,  the  fruit  of  whose  labours  was  that  other 
men  should  enter  into  them.  Self-abnegation  is 
the  essence  of  the  Christian  creed,  and  Crashaw's 
Christianity  made  full  trial  of  its  obligations.  He 
is  one  of  those  figures  of  whom  it  is  well  to  be 
reminded,  upon  whose  gentle  and  serene  influence 
it  is  profitable  to  reflect.  For  it  is  they  who,  asking 
little  for  themselves,  make  plain  the  ways  of  life 
and  of  art  before  the  feet  of  progress. 


129 


GEORGE  HERBERT 

IT  has  been  the  happy  privilege  of  the  Church 
of  England,  out  of  her  own  spirit  of  sweet 
reasonableness  and  moderation,  to  train 
from  time  to  time  a  band  of  men  who,  while  they 
are  nurtured  on  her  own  essence  and  educated  in 
her  special  precepts,  become  in  turn  the  strength, 
the  support,  the  very  embodiment  of  her  prin- 
ciples and  doctrine.  "  That  which  the  fountain 
sends  forth  returns  again  to  the  fountain."  And 
the  strength  and  support  of  that  branch  of  the 
Catholic  Church  militant  in  our  own  country  has 
always  lain  upon  the  middle  way  ;  it  has  never 
been  her  method  either  to  "  waste  in  passionate 
dreams,"  or  to  protest  overmuch  with  the  voices 
of  prophecy  or  denunciation.  To  say  this  is  not 
to  presume  to  deprecate  the  excellence  of  those 
kinds  of  enthusiasm  which  are  congenitally 
foreign  to  the  English  character.  The  rapt  absorp- 
tion of  the  mystic,  the  perpetual  adoration  of  the 
saint,  must  be  objects  of  reverence  to  every  branch 
of  the  faithful ;  but  such  spiritual  detachment  is 
probably  peculiar  to  races  in  which  the  natural 
atmosphere  is  more  highly  charged  with  the 
elements  of  romance  and  imagination.  In  the 
same  way,  the  fervour  and  fiery  eloquence  of  a 
John  Knox,  great  and  effectual  weapon  as  it  is 
upon  its  own  field,  would  seem  more  attuned  to  a 
national  temperament  in  which  the  powerful 
assertion  of  individuality,  and  the  delight  in  the 
spoken  word,  are  more  insistent  than  they  can 
130 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND 

ever  be  in  their  appeal  to  our  milder  and  more 
equable  disposition.  The  Church  of  England, 
when  she  has  been  content  to  speak  with  her  own 
voice,  has  spoken  more  directly  than  the  mystic, 
and  more  temperately  than  the  enthusiast.  When 
one  thinks  of  the  Church  of  England,  quietly 
leavening  the  land  through  the  gentle  operation 
of  the  ages,  one  pictures,  as  it  were,  a  broad 
stretch  of  meadowland,  rich  and  mellow  in  the 
light  of  sunset,  with  here  and  there  among  its 
bowery  hollows  the  heavenward-pointing  spire 
of  the  village  church,  and,  close  beside  the  yew- 
trees  in  the  grave-yard,  the  grey  walls  and  open 
porch  of  the  country  parsonage.  Here,  as  the  cattle 
wind  homeward  in  the  evening  light,  the  benign, 
white-haired  parson  stands  at  his  gate  to  greet 
the  cowherd,  and  the  village  chime  calls  the 
labourers  to  evensong.  For  these  contented  spirits, 
happily  removed  from  the  stress  and  din  of  con- 
flicting creeds  and  clashing  dogmas,  the  message 
of  the  gospel  tells  of  divine  approval  for  work  well 
done,  of  light  at  eventide,  of  rest  and  refreshment 
for  the  weary.  For  them  God  is  not  in  the  earth- 
quake or  in  the  fire,  but  in  the  still  small  voice. 

And  among  these  typical  spirits,  fixed  stars  of  a 
quiet  faith,  no  figure  stands  out  more  brightly  or 
more  memorable  than  that  of  George  Herbert. 
So  firmly  does  he  fill  the  imagination,  so  fully 
orbed  does  his  character  appear,  that  it  is  difficult 
to  realize  that  he  died  in  his  fortieth  year,  having 
tried  and  tested  so  many  of  the  human  emotions. 
For  this  is  the  special  appeal  which  Herbert  makes 
to  the  ordinary  layman  ;  typical  English  church- 
man as  he  was,  he  was  first  and  foremost  a  man  ; 
he  had  plunged  into  the  life  of  pleasure  before 

'31 


GEORGE  HERBERT 


preferring  the  life  of  self-sacrifice.  It  has  been 
objected  by  some  critics  that  of  all  Walton's  Lives 
the  life  of  George  Herbert  rings  least  true,  that 
there  is  an  air  almost  of  sanctimoniousness  about 
it,  which  seems  assumed  for  the  purposes  of  the 
occasion  ;  that,  in  short,  it  is  just  a  little  conven- 
tionally insincere.  One  may  question  so  sweeping 
a  criticism,  and  yet  admit  that  Walton  overpaints 
his  picture.  He  never  knew  Herbert  personally, 
and  he  wrote  in  the  atmosphere  that  pervaded 
the  finished  life.  He  described  his  subject,  there- 
fore, as  saintly  from  his  boyhood,  which  he  was 
most  certainly  not ;  as  moving  always  towards 
the  priesthood,  whereas  he  was  for  years  an  adroit 
and  pleasure-loving  courtier ;  and,  finally,  as 
living  out  a  life  consistent  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave,  while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  most  winning 
and  human  of  all  his  characteristics  was  his  bitter 
abandonment  of  the  bright  attractions  of  the  world, 
an  abandonment  not  effected  without  many 
searchings  of  heart  and  much  pain  of  conscience. 
Under  the  coming  hand  of  death  he  gave  the  MS. 
of  his  poems  to  his  friend  Duncon  with  this  free 
confession  :  "  Sir,  I  pray  deliver  this  little  book 
to  my  dear  brother  Farrer,  and  tell  him  he  shall 
find  in  it  a  picture  of  the  many  spiritual  conflicts 
that  have  passed  betwixt  God  and  my  soul,  before 
I  could  subject  mine  to  the  will  of  Jesus  my  master : 
in  whose  service  I  have  now  found  perfect  free- 
dom." And  this  was  no  fashion  of  speech.  It  is 
the  peculiar  charm  of  his  life  that  that  peace, 
"  which  passeth  all  understanding,"  was  not 
attained  without  a  full  experience  of  the  conflicts 
by  which  the  pilgrim's  progress  is  commonly 
beset,  George  Herbert  did  not  fear  God  for  nought. 


MOTHER   AND    SON 


He  had  come  to  the  foot  of  the  cross  by  the  way 
of  Calvary. 

For  the  main  outlines  of  his  life  Walton  still 
remains  the  chief  authority  ;  later  research  has 
corrected  a  few  facts  and  recast  the  interpre- 
tations, but  for  Herbert's  later  years  in  particular 
Walton's  rich  and  humane  picture  will  always 
endure  as  a  masterpiece  in  portraiture.  It  was  on 
the  third  of  April,  1593,  that  George  Herbert  was 
born  in  Montgomery  Castle  in  Wales.  His  father's 
seat,  which  Walton  describes  as  "  a  place  of 
state  and  strength,"  and  Anthony  a  Wood  as  "  a 
pleasant  and  romancy  place,"  was  destroyed 
under  the  Commonwealth,  but  its  ruins  still 
stand  on  a  rocky  and  wooded  hill,  overlooking 
broad  and  fertile  meadows.  The  future  poet  was 
the  fifth  son  of  Richard  Herbert  of  Montgomery 
Castle,  by  his  wife,  Magdalen,  youngest  daughter 
of  Sir  Richard  Newport,  of  High  Ercall,  Shrop- 
shire, who  was  in  his  day  accounted  the  largest 
landed  proprietor  in  the  county.  The  father  is 
described  as  black-haired  and  black-bearded, 
handsome  and  brave,  but  of  a  somewhat  stern 
demeanour,  while  the  mother  was  of  a  singular 
beauty  both  of  mind  and  body,  a  great  and  good 
lady,  if  ever  such  devoted  herself  to  the  care  and 
culture  of  her  children.  It  was  to  her  that  Donne 
addressed  his  sonnet  of  S.  Mary  Magdalen,  and 
his  later  "  Autumnal  Beauty  "  was  also  written 
in  her  praise.  Of  George  Herbert's  own  devotion 
to  his  mother  the  Parentalia  contains  many  evi- 
dences. 

Tu  vero  Mater  perpetim  laudabere 
Nato  dolenti  :  literae  hoc  debent  tibi 
Queis  me  educasti. 

133 


GEORGE  HERBERT 


George  Herbert  was  only  four  years  old  when 
his  father  died,  leaving  his  mother  with  the  grave 
responsibility  of  educating  a  large  and  somewhat 
self- willed  family.  Her  eldest  son,  Edward,  was 
then  of  an  age  to  go  to  Oxford,  and  was  entered 
at  University  College,  and  it  seems  likely  (though 
on  this  point  there  is  some  doubt)  that  Mrs. 
Herbert  removed  her  whole  family  to  the  univer- 
sity city,  in  order  to  watch  over  her  eldest  boy, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  give  the  others  the  benefit 
of  sound  tuition.  At  any  rate,  George  was  taught 
by  private  tutors  until  his  twelfth  year,  when  he 
proceeded  to  Westminster  School  under  Richard 
Ireland.  Here  he  made  rapid  progress  with  his 
books,  became  a  King's  scholar,  and  in  his 
fifteenth  year  was  elected  to  a  scholarship  at 
Trinity,  Cambridge,  where  he  matriculated  on 
the  i8th  December,  1609.  While  still  at  school 
he  attracted  attention  by  a  remarkable,  if  rather 
painfully  precocious  rejoinder  to  one  Andrew 
Melville,  a  minister  of  the  Scots  church,  who  had 
attacked  the  ritual  of  the  Royal  chapel  of  King 
James  ;  and  at  Cambridge  he  soon  made  a  name 
by  his  pen.  In  his  nineteenth  year  he  contributed 
two  poems  in  Latin  to  the  collection  of  obituary 
verse  published  by  the  University  on  the  death 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  poems  full  of  scholarship 
and  scholarly  commendations. 

Quod  si  fata  illi  longam  invidere  salutem, 
Et  patrio  regno,  sub  quo  iam  Principe  nobis 
Quid  sperare,  immo  quid  non  sperare  licebat  ? 

At  the  same  time  he  was  essaying  English  verse 
as  well,  as  his  letters  to  his  mother  prove,  and 
was  yet  not  neglecting  his  more  formal  studies. 


THE  LIFE  OF  PLEASURE 


He  took  his  B.A.  degree  in  1612-13,  became  a 
minor  fellow  in  October,  1614,  a  major  fellow  in 
March,  1616,  and  proceeded  Master  of  Arts  a 
year  later. 

It  was  now  that  circumstances  threw  him  into 
touch  with  the  court,  and  drew  him  into  that 
relation  with  worldly  pleasure  from  which  he 
had  so  hard  a  struggle  to  free  himself,  and  upon 
which  he  used  in  later  years  to  look  back  with  so 
sincere  a  regret.  He  was  appointed  in  1612  Public 
Orator  to  the  University,  having  already  "  showed 
his  fitness  for  the  employment,"  as  Walton  puts 
it,  by  a  complimentary  letter  to  the  King  acknow- 
ledging the  royal  gift  of  a  copy  of  his  Basilicon 
Doron.  "  This  letter,"  says  Walton,  "  was  writ 
in  such  excellent  Latin,  was  so  full  of  conceits, 
and  all  the  expressions  so  suited  to  the  genius  of 
the  King,  that  he  inquired  the  Orator's  name, 
and  then  asked  William,  Earl  of  Pembroke,  if 
he  knew  him.  Whose  answer  was,  '  That  he 
knew  him  very  well,  and  that  he  was  his  kinsman  ; 
but  he  loved  him  more  for  his  learning  and  virtue 
than  for  that  he  was  of  his  name  and  family.' 
At  which  answer  the  King  smiled,  and  asked  the 
Earl's  leave  that  he  might  love  him  too,  for  he 
took  him  to  be  the  jewel  of  that  university." 

This  introduction  led  to  considerable  results. 
Herbert  was  clearly  at  this  time  well  set  up  in  his 
own  estimation  ;  the  favour  of  the  court  flattered 
him  ;  the  conspicuous  duties  of  his  post  added 
to  his  estimation  in  the  public  gaze  ;  and  "  the 
love  of  a  court  conversation,  mixed,"  as  Walton 
quaintly  puts  it,  "  with  a  laudable  ambition  to  be 
something  more  than  he  then  was,"  led  him  step 
by  step  into  the  net  of  the  courtier.  For  five  or 

135 


GEORGE  HERBERT 


six  years,  when  the  King  was  at  neighbouring 
Royston,  Herbert  was  frequently  about  the 
court ;  "  he  enjoyed  his  genteel  humour  for 
clothes  "  ;  neglected  his  public  duties,  and  found 
no  little  satisfaction  in  a  life  of  ostentation  and 
pleasure.  In  those  days  the  King  could  show  his 
favour  to  a  layman  by  giving  him  a  religious 
benefice,  and  King  James  bestowed  upon  Herbert 
the  rich  sinecure  living  of  Whitford,  which  was 
worth  in  the  money  of  that  time  £120  a  year,  or 
nearly  £1,000  in  our  own.*  With  this  compar- 
ative affluence  at  his  back,  he  was  anxious  to 
leave  the  university  altogether,  to  travel,  and  to 
regain  his  health  (for  he  had  already  developed 
signs  of  consumption)  ;  but  his  mother,  who  was 
always  a  controlling  influence  in  his  life,  besought 
him  not  to  abandon  his  career  for  the  pursuit  of 
pleasure,  and,  being  a  good  son,  he  complied 
with  her  wish.  It  was,  indeed,  as  well,  for  shortly 
afterwards  the  King's  death  put  an  end  to  all  his 
hopes  of  court  preferment,  and  he  was  once  more 
thrown  back  upon  his  own  resources,  and  upon 
that  deep  undercurrent  of  religious  feeling,  which 
had  never  really  failed  him  as  an  inspiration. 

It  is  difficult  to  conjecture  how  much  George 
Herbert's  return  to  the  spiritual  life  was  due  to 
the  sudden  failure  of  royal  patronage,  and  how 
much  to  his  own  devotion  ;  but  it  is  vain  to  pre- 
tend that  it  was  at  first  an  easy  or  a  palatable 
change  of  front  for  him.  "  In  this  time  of  retire- 
ment "  [in  London  and  Kent],  says  Walton,  "  he 
had  many  conflicts  with  himself,  whether  he 
should  return  to  the  painted  pleasures  of  a  court 

*  Dr.  Grosart's  Introduction  to  Herbert's  Poems  (George 
Bell  &  Sons),  p.  xlvi. 

136 


THE  PREBEND'S   PIETY 


life,  or  betake  himself  to  a  study  of  divinity,  and 
enter  into  sacred  orders,  to  which  his  mother  had 
often  persuaded  him.  These  were  such  conflicts 
as  they  only  can  know  that  have  endured  them  ; 
for  ambitious  desires,  and  the  outward  glory  of 
this  world,  are  not  easily  laid  aside  ;  but  at  last 
God  inclined  him  to  put  on  a  resolution  to  serve 
at  His  altar." 

There  is  some  obscurity,  as  Dr.  Grosart  has 
pointed  out,  about  the  exact  date  of  Herbert's 
taking  orders,  for,  although  he  was  appointed 
to  the  living  of  Leighton  Bromswold  in  July, 
1625,  it  would  appear  that  this  appointment, 
like  that  to  Whitford,  was  of  the  nature  of  a 
sinecure  bestowed  upon  a  layman,  and  that 
though  he  was  for  some  years  to  come  engaged 
in  good  works,  he  did  not  actually  take  orders 
until  he  was  appointed  to  Bemerton  in  1630.  But 
at  any  rate  he  became  prebend  of  Leighton 
Bromswold,  and  at  once  set  to  work  to  rebuild 
the  church.  Here  at  last  he  had  found  work  to 
his  hand.  The  fabric  was  in  a  ruinous  condition, 
and  he  wrote  to  the  wealthy  landowners  in  the 
neighbourhood  "  witty  and  persuasive  letters  " 
which  moved  them  to  generosity.  The  purses  of 
his  own  kindred  were  also  laid  under  contribution, 
for  "  he  became  restless  till  he  saw  it  finished." 
In  the  midst  of  the  work,  he  suffered  irreparable 
loss  in  the  death  of  his  mother,  a  blow  which 
affected  him  so  deeply  as  to  endanger  his  own 
health  and  to  oblige  him  finally  to  resign  his 
posts  at  the  university.  He  was  indeed  seriously 
ill,  and  betook  himself  to  Dauntsey  in  Wiltshire, 
where  the  mild  air  was  supposed  to  be  especially 
favourable  for  diseases  of  the  chest.  It  was  here, 

137 


GEORGE  HERBERT 


while  staying  with  his  kinsman  Lord  Danby,  that 
George  Herbert  met  his  future  wife.  She  was  the 
eldest  daughter  of  Charles  Danvers,  of  Bainton, 
Wilts.,  and  the  match  was  rather  curiously 
arranged.  For,  as  Walton  tells  the  story,  "  this 
Mr.  Danvers,  having  known  him  long  and  famil- 
iarly, did  so  much  affect  him  that  he  often  and 
publicly  declared  a  desire  that  Mr.  Herbert 
would  marry  any  of  his  nine  daughters — for  he 
had  so  many — but  rather  his  daughter  Jane  than 
any  other,  because  Jane  was  his  beloved  daughter. 
And  he  had  often  said  the  same  to  Mr.  Herbert 
himself  ;  and  that  if  he  could  like  her  for  a  wife, 
and  she  him  for  a  husband,  Jane  should  have  a 
double  blessing  :  and  Mr.  Danvers  had  so  often 
said  the  like  to  Jane,  and  so  much  commended 
Mr.  Herbert  to  her,  that  Jane  became  so  much  a 
platonic,  as  to  fall  in  love  with  Mr.  Herbert  un- 
seen." This  match,  so  vicariously  prepared,  was 
sealed  by  a  marriage  on  the  fifth  of  March,  1628-9, 
and  resulted  in  the  most  complete  mutual  affec- 
tion and  happiness.  Indeed  the  gentle  humour 
of  Walton's  epilogue  must  on  no  account  be 
missed  ;  for  he  tells  that,  when  Mrs.  Herbert 
was  married  a  second  time  to  Sir  Robert  Cook, 
she  was  "  his  wife  eight  years,  and  lived  his  widow 
about  fifteen  ;  all  which  time  she  took  a  pleasure 
in  mentioning  and  commending  the  excellencies 
of  Mr.  George  Herbert." 

Within  a  year  of  his  marriage  Herbert  at  last 
took  deacon's  orders,  and  was  preferred  to  that 
pleasant  living  at  Bemerton,  with  which  his  name 
is  indissolubly  connected.  The  story  of  his  in- 
duction can  be  told  only  in  Walton's  words. 
"  When  he  was  shut  into  Bemerton  Church," 

138 


THE  PARISH-PRIEST  AT  BEMERTON 

he  says,  "  being  left  there  alone  to  toll  the  bell, — 
as  the  law  required  him — he  stayed  so  much 
longer  than  an  ordinary  time,  before  he  returned 
to  those  friends  that  stayed  expecting  him  at  the 
church  door,  that  his  friend  Mr.  Woodnot  looked 
in  at  the  church  window,  and  saw  him  lie  pros- 
trate on  the  ground  before  the  altar  ;  at  which 
time  and  place — as  he  after  told  Mr.  Woodnot — 
he  set  some  rules  to  himself  for  the  future  manage 
of  his  life  ;  and  then  and  there  made  a  vow  to 
labour  to  keep  them." 

Alas  !  the  time  left  to  him  was  but  short ;  his 
ministry  at  Bemerton  embraced  but  three  years 
in  all.  The  consumption,  which  had  always 
threatened  him,  was  slowly  making  its  inroad  upon 
a  constitution  which  had  never  been  other  than 
fragile,  and  these  three  years  of  wise  and  kindly 
ministration  were  always  lived  under  the  shadow 
of  approaching  death.  Much  more,  however, 
were  they  lived  in  the  very  essence  and  odour  of 
sanctity.  It  is  at  Bemerton  that  the  world  loves 
to  think  of  George  Herbert,  the  chain  that  bound 
him  to  the  world  broken,  his  struggles  with  in- 
clination and  ambition  at  an  end,  and  his  gentle 
spirit,  fenced  round  with  love  and  reverence, 
breathing  the  consolation  of  the  faith  in  every 
utterance  of  a  strenuous  and  eloquent  tongue. 
Walton,  with  great  particularity,  sets  forth  the 
quality  of  his  teaching,  and,  simple  though  it  may 
seem  to  the  more  self-conscious  theology  of  our 
own  day,  it  will  be  found  to  explain  the  English 
liturgy  with  a  thoroughness  that  many  a  more 
sophisticated  preacher  might  envy  him.  But, 
well  and  warmly  as  he  must  have  discoursed  to 
his  little  flock,  Herbert  had  left  the  days  of 

139 


GEORGE  HERBERT 


personal  ambition  behind  him,  and  was  no  longer 
anxious  to  repeat  the  triumphs  of  the  orator. 
At  Leighton  Bromswold  he  had  lowered  the  pulpit 
to  the  height  of  the  prayer  desk,  to  the  end  that 
"  prayer  and  preaching,  being  equally  useful, 
might  agree  like  brethren,  and  having  an  equal 
honour  and  estimation  " ;  and  this  principle, 
the  exaltation  of  spiritual  devotion,  warm  as  it  is 
at  the  heart  of  all  his  poems,  was  the  essence  of 
his  instruction  also.  For,  as  Walton  tells  us,  "  if 
he  were  at  any  time  too  zealous  in  his  sermons, 
it  was  in  reproving  the  indecencies  of  the  people's 
behaviour  in  the  time  of  divine  service  ;  and  of 
those  ministers  that  huddle  up  the  Church  prayers, 
without  a  visible  reverence  and  affection  ;  namely, 
such  as  seemed  to  say  the  Lord's  prayer  or  a 
collect  in  a  breath.  But  for  himself,  his  custom 
was  to  stop  betwixt  every  collect,  and  give  the 
people  time  to  consider  what  they  had  prayed, 
and  to  force  their  desires  affectionately  to  God, 
before  he  engaged  them  into  new  petitions." 

The  dates  of  his  various  poems  are  uncertain  ; 
some  of  them  were,  doubtless,  written  in  youth  ; 
some  again  during  his  time  of  retirement  in  pre- 
paration for  the  priestly  life  ;  but  a  great  many 
of  them — perhaps,  one  may  even  say  the  greater 
part  of  "  The  Temple  " — must  have  been  com- 
posed at  Bemerton.  So  much  are  they  become  a 
portion  of  the  literature  of  devotion  that  it  can 
be  no  part  of  the  present  rough  picture  of  the 
saintly  figure  which  created  them  to  submit  them 
to  cold,  analytical  criticism.  They  have  their 
mannerisms,  of  course,  many  of  them  foibles  of 
their  day  ;  such  as  the  strange  devices  of  arrange- 
ment and  type  ;  such  too  as  the  occasionally 

140 


THE  ANGLICAN  MUSE 


tortured  and  "  conceited  "  phraseology.  But  they 
stand  in  the  first  place  amid  the  very  small  body 
of  English  devotional  verse  which  is  also  worthy 
to  be  counted  among  the  riches  of  English  poetry. 
The  spirit  of  the  British  Church  is  here. 

I  joy,  deare  Mother,  when  I  view 
Thy  perfect  lineaments  and  hue 

Both  sweet  and  bright. 
Beauty  in  thee  takes  up  her  place, 
And  dates  her  letters  from  thy  face, 

When  she  doth  write. 

Other  branches  of  the  faith  have  other  virtues  ; 
there  is  a  diversity  of  gifts,  and  God  fulfils  Him- 
self in  many  ways. 

But,  dearest  Mother,  what  those  misse, 
The  mean — thy  praise  and  glorie  is. 

Here  is  devotion  without  ecstasy,  faith  without 
vain-glory,  love  without  jealousy.  And  where  in 
all  the  literature  of  the  church  shall  we  find  a 
picture  like  this  of  an  English  Easter  morning  ? 

I  got  me  flowers  to  straw  Thy  way, 

I  got  me  boughs  off  many  a  tree  ; 

But  Thou  wast  up  by  break  of  day, 

And  brought'st  Thy  sweets  along  with  Thee. 

It  is  the  perfect  utterance,  fitting  the  perfect  hour. 
And  so  in  his  church,  in  his  study,  and  in  his 
happy  wanderings  along  the  lanes  to  Salisbury, 
the  three  years  of  his  peaceful  eventide  wore  down 
to  sunset.  In  particular,  one  must  think  of  him 
by  the  country-side,  for  it  was  there  that  he  spoke 
so  many  kindly  words  of  help  and  counsel ;  there 
that  he  was  most  eagerly  awaited  by  the  cottage- 
doors,  "  Some  of  the  meaner  sort  of  his  parish 
141 


GEORGE  HERBERT 


did  so  love  and  reverence  Mr.  Herbert  that  they 
would  let  their  plough  rest  when  Mr.  Herbert's 
saints '-bell  rung  to  prayers,  that  they  might  also 
offer  their  devotions  to  God  with  him  ;  and  would 
then  return  back  to  their  plough."  Work  and 
prayer  !  It  is  the  familiar,  well-tried  amulet  of  the 
soul.  And  with  Little  Gidding,  where  the  family 
of  Nicholas  Ferrar  made  a  perpetual  offering  to 
God  of  their  faith  and  love,  Herbert  was  a  fre- 
quent correspondent  ;  "  their  new  holy  friendship 
was  long  maintained  without  any  interview,  but 
only  by  loving  and  endearing  letters."  And  so, 
when  the  approach  of  death  was  certain,  it  was 
to  Ferrar  that  George  Herbert  sent  his  precious 
packet  of  poetry,  desiring  him  "  to  read  it ;  and 
then,  if  he  can  think  it  may  turn  to  the  advantage 
of  any  dejected  poor  soul,  let  it  be  made  public  ; 
if  not,  let  him  burn  it ;  for  I  and  it  are  less  than 
the  least  of  God's  mercies." 

The  lesson  of  humility — the  last  and  the  hardest 
lesson  which  man  has  to  learn — was  indeed  well 
learnt ;  the  once-proud  knees  had  bowed  them- 
selves before  the  altar  ;  and  the  spirit  was  ready 
for  its  release. 

There  are  souls  that  call  us  to  the  fierce,  tem- 
pestuous moments  of  life,  spirits,  like  Michael's, 
armed  with  the  sword  of  the  Lord,  to  do  His  will 
upon  His  enemies.  They  have  their  place  in  the 
vanguard  of  the  Faith.  But  there  are  other  souls, 
no  less  eloquent  of  His  presence,  who  come,  like 
Gabriel,  with  a  message  of  peace  and  love,  and 
lead  us  by  quiet  waters,  in  the  valley  of  consol- 
ation. Of  such  is  the  tender,  humble,  devoted 
spirit  of  George  Herbert.  Three  hundred  years 
have  almost  passed  since  he  laid  down  the  earthly 
142 


GABRIEL'S  LILIES 


duties  of  his  priesthood,  and  the  prayer  with 
which  he  took  them  up  is  abundantly  fulfilled. 
"  I  beseech  God,"  he  said,  "  that  my  humble 
and  charitable  life  so  win  upon  others  as  to  bring 
glory  to  my  Jesus,  whom  I  have  this  day  taken  to 
be  my  master  and  governor." 

He  has  his  wish  :  his  songs  live  after  him  ;  and 
like  a  white  lily  before  the  altar  of  the  Eternal 
faith,  the  flower  of  his  devoted  life 

Smells  sweet  and  blossoms  in  the  dust. 


'43 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY 

SOME   forty   years   have   passed   since   his 
death,   and   Kingsley  still   holds   his  own. 
He  is  still  read,  and  still  preserved,  "  Every 
gentleman's  library  "  must  have  its  Kingsley  on 
the  shelves.  Forty  years  is  not  indeed  a  cycle  ; 
but,  in  the  evolution  of  literary  taste,  it  is  at  least  a 
generation.  The  Victorian  era  is  long  since  closed ; 
its  account  is  cast ;  and  Kingsley  remains  among 
its  characteristic  figures.  This  in  itself  is  fame. 

And  yet  of  all  the  conspicuous  figures  of  Vic- 
torian literature,  Kingsley  is  perhaps  the  one 
that  has  most  shifted  his  ground  during  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century.  His  memory  survives,  and 
his  work  is  read  ;  but  neither  his  work  nor  his 
memory  can  be  said  to  retain  that  really  effectual 
influence  upon  the  thought  or  literature  of  the 
present  day  which  it  exercised  at  the  moment 
of  its  production.  The  best  of  his  novels  "  wear 
well,"  but  they  do  not  wear  because  of  the  qualities 
which  he  sought  most  assiduously  to  instil  into 
them.  They  are,  in  short,  survivals  rather  than 
permanent  influences.  The  stories  still  charm  ; 
their  cheery,  manly,  open-air  spirit  is  still  in- 
fectious ;  but  there  is  now  a  sort  of  faded  glory 
about  them.  They  are  of  good  fabric,  but  in  a 
sense  they  begin  to  grow  "  old-fashioned  "  ;  and 
the  secret  of  this  old-fashioned  savour  is  precisely 
the  secret  of  their  composition.  They  were  de- 
signed for  topical  uses,  and  the  occasion  has  gone 
by  ;  they  are  all,  in  the  purpose  of  their  design, 
children  of  yesterday. 

Kingsley,  in  short,  has  had  to  suffer  the  penalty 

144 


THE  PENALTY  OF  ACTUALITY 

of  all  those  who  in  their  time  are  enthusiastically 
"  in  the  movement " ;  the  anxieties  and  the 
loyalties  which  inspired  him  are  no  longer  press- 
ing and  importunate.  For,  although  the  best  of 
his  novels  are  historic  in  their  setting,  their 
inspiration  was  always  contemporary.  Kingsley 
was  alarmed  by  what  he  conceived  to  be  the 
tendencies  of  the  Oxford  Movement ;  he  had 
visions  of  England  handed  over,  Church  and 
State,  to  the  Papacy  ;  forthwith  he  must  be 
directing  his  vigorous  fiction  to  portray  the  horrors 
of  the  Inquisition  and  the  victorious  iniquities 
of  Rome.  He  was  alarmed  again  for  the  future  of 
the  youth  of  England.  Too  much  speculation 
threatened  to  make  agnostics  and  browbent 
students  of  the  library  ;  and  again  he  is  eager  to 
proclaim  the  glories  of  the  natural  man,  and  the 
inspiring  achievements  of  the  life  of  flood  and 
field.  All  these  were  excellent  cries,  and  they 
enjoyed  a  very  desirable  currency  in  their  time  ; 
but  the  immediate  need  for  them  is  gone.  If  we 
except  a  few  misguided  fanatics,  no  one  now 
imagines  that  the  Pope  is  in  danger  of  being 
enthroned  at  Canterbury  ;  and  the  admirable 
service  done  by  English  athletes  in  the  war  has 
so  silenced  the  criticism  of  all  the  world,  that 
perhaps  even  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  has  repented 
his  glib  jest  of  a  few  years  back.  The  dangers  are 
now  far  more  upon  the  other  side  ;  apathy  in  the 
religious  life,  and  excessive  adulation  of  the 
biceps  are  far  more  menacing  elements  to-day 
than  the  perils  of  "  Romanism  "  and  effeminacy. 
Time  has  swept  away  the  dragons  that  Kingsley 
set  forth  so  valiantly  to  slay,  and  his  work  has  to 
take  its  stand  upon  grounds  quite  other  than  the 

145  L 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY 


author's  original  intention.  But  if  the  claims  of 
muscular  Christianity  and  the  problems  of  Chris- 
tian Socialism  are  now  satisfactorily  adjusted, 
it  belongs  all  the  more  to  the  fibre  of  Kingsley's 
genius  that  his  work  is  surviving  its  natural 
inspiration,  and  retaining,  if  not  a  direct  influence, 
at  least  a  spirit,  an  attraction,  and  a  "  voice  " 
for  the  present  generation.  A  small  talent  must 
inevitably  have  gone  down  under  the  advance  of 
principle,  but  Kingsley's  is  far  from  a  small 
talent ;  it  is  a  vital  and  enduring  one.  And,  if 
we  ask  what  it  is  that  preserves  such  work,  when 
the  moving  causes  of  its  production  have  passed 
away,  we  shall  probably  find  the  answer  in  that 
underlying  humanity,  that  fervent,  whole-hearted 
love  of  man  which  beats  and  quivers  in  every- 
thing he  felt  and  wrote.  Amavimus  ;  Amamus  ; 
Amabimus  was  the  epitaph  which  Kingsley  chose 
for  himself ;  and  there  is  no  such  antiseptic  to 
literature  as  Love.  "  Style  "  has  been  described 
as  the  one  preservative  of  literature,  and  style  in 
its  turn  is  all-important ;  but  there  are  writers 
— one  thinks  at  once  of  Dickens — whose  style 
affords  many  opportunities  to  criticism,  but  who 
triumph  over  their  style  by  the  dominating 
sincerity  of  their  love  and  their  humanity.  And 
Kingsley  is  one  of  these.  Some  of  his  literary 
machinery  is  lumbering,  and  many  of  his  effects 
are  childish,  but  at  heart  he  is  infallibly  humane ; 
and  not  only  humane,  but  a  poet.  The  poetic 
element  in  him  is  perhaps  inseparable  from  the 
humanity.  The  two  qualities  work  together,  and 
form  the  very  essence  of  the  man.  He  was  a  poet 
because  he  loved  much,  and  he  loved  much  be- 
cause he  was  a  poet. 

146 


THE  HEART  OF  MANHOOD 

The  actual  poetical  works  of  Kingsley  form 
but  a  single  modest  volume,  and  much  of  that  is 
occupied  by  "  The  Saint's  Tragedy,"  which  is 
rather  meritorious  than  successful.  But  a  poetic 
instinct  underlies  all  his  work,  and  his  slender 
bundle  of  ballads  have  taken  their  place  among 
the  most  tender  and  sincere  of  the  achievements 
of  Victorian  verse.  They  have  the  true  ballad 
note,  and  a  generous  share  of  that  "  natural 
magic  "  which  distinguishes  a  poem  from  a 
metrical  exercise.  "  Oh  that  we  two  were  maying," 
"  The  Sands  of  Dee,"  "  Valentine's  Day,"  and 
the  songs  from  "  The  Water  Babies,"  have  few 
rivals  in  their  own  line.  They  will  continue  to 
be  read  and  sung  as  long  as  ballad-poetry  is 
appreciated  in  England. 

Kingsley,  we  have  said,  was  a  writer  with  a 
"  mission,"  and  in  one  sense  his  "  mission  "  is 
a  little  antiquated.  But,  although  he  dissipated 
some  of  his  natural  force  by  engaging  in  themes 
and  discussions  which  were  outside  his  native 
range,  and  although  his  work  suffered  inevitably 
from  the  controversial  and  topical  interests  which 
inspired  it,  there  is  another  sense  in  which  it  may 
be  said  to  have  a  surviving  and  vital  lesson  for 
all  time  and  for  all  classes  of  intellectual  activity. 
For  true  enthusiasm  never  loses  its  power,  and 
optimism,  when  all  has  been  said,  remains  the 
natural  attitude  of  mankind.  And  Kingsley 
was  a  genuine  enthusiast  and  a  thoroughgoing 
optimist.  Behind  all  his  vigorous  party-cries, 
his  "  No  nonsense  !  "  his  "  Our  side,  right  or 
wrong  !  "  and  all  the  rest  of  his  boyish  partisan- 
ship— behind  all  this  there  is  a  fine,  informing 
faith  in  progress  and  human  destiny,  which  can 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY 


never  fail  of  infection.  "  The  earth  is  the  Lord's 
and  the  fulness  thereof  "  ;  "  God  's  in  His  heaven, 
all's  right  with  the  world  "  ;  "  Oh,  God  !  my 
God  !  Thou  wilt  not  drift  away  !  "  This  unfalter- 
ing and  happy  faith  Kingsley  shares  with  Brown- 
ing and  the  Psalmist.  The  life  of  the  fields  which 
he  loved  so  well,  the  voices  of  the  wood  and  stream 
spoke  to  him  with  no  suggestion  of  change  or 
decay  ;  in  every  common  sight  he  saw  evidence 
of  the  brotherhood  of  nature,  and,  above  all,  of 
the  fatherhood  of  God.  "  To  know  that  men  are 
brothers,"  he  wrote,  "  they  must  feel  that  they 
have  one  Father,  and  a  way  to  feel  that  they  have 
one  common  Father  is  to  see  each  other  wonder- 
ing, side  by  side,  at  His  glorious  works."  This  was 
the  secret  of  his  socialism  ;  it  is  also  the  keynote 
of  his  work.  And  work  inspired  by  such  a  motive 
has  at  its  heart  the  two  enduring  qualities  of  hope 
and  aspiration. 


148 


CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI 

THE  genius  of  Christina  Rossetti  pres- 
ents both  to  imagination  and  to  criticism 
one  of  the  most  sympathetically  inter- 
esting figures  in  the  whole  range  of  Victorian 
literature  ;  and  its  interest,  for  those  who  care 
to  pierce  below  the  surface  of  the  art  and  to  try 
to  understand  the  spirit  that  inspires  it,  is  largely 
concerned  with  the  sort  of  struggle  or  evolution 
of  character  which  can  be  seen,  as  it  were,  de- 
veloping in  the  poetry  itself.  It  is  customary,  of 
course,  to  place  her  among  the  Pre-Raphaelites  ; 
and  by  birth,  environment,  and  training,  her 
poetry  may  be  said  to  have  been  fostered  in  the 
very  heart  of  that  warm  and  glowing  movement. 
Bred  in  a  household  where  the  concerns  of  art 
were  the  daily  interests  of  the  family,  deeply 
devoted  to  her  elder  brother,  and  immensely 
stimulated  by  his  literary  aspirations  ;  herself 
accustomed  from  childhood  to  practise  the  art 
of  her  father  in  the  very  atmosphere  of  the  renais- 
sance ;  it  was  impossible  that  she  should  not  be 
drawn  into  that  movement  which  was  the  breath 
of  life  to  the  little  circle  around  her.  But  her 
actual  presence  in  that  circle — the  apparition  of 
the  shy,  eluding,  girlish  figure  in  the  shadow  by 
the  fireplace,  listening  wide-eyed  to  the  golden 
dreams  of  that  little  company  of  enthusiasts  in 
the  lamplight — suggests  at  once  two  rather 
searching  problems  in  the  attitude  of  woman  to 
art ;  the  one  a  general  problem,  the  other  a 
particular  ;  and  both  remarkably  illustrated  in 
the  life  of  Christina  Rossetti. 
149 


CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI 


To  take  the  general  problem  first ;  all  who  are 
interested  in  the  feminine  character  must  have 
noticed  that  women  make  unsatisfactory  allies 
in  any  general,  concerted  movement.  That  sense 
of  brotherhood,  of  community  of  action,  which 
enables  men  to  sink  minor  differences  of  tempera- 
ment and  outlook  for  the  sake  of  a  commonly 
desired  good,  is  almost  entirely  lacking  in  women. 
They  combine  very  badly ;  their  individual 
interests  bring  them  into  immediate  conflict ; 
in  a  very  short  while  each  is  off  on  her  own  trail, 
and  the  common  cause  is  left  to  take  care  of  itself. 
And — to  pass  at  once  to  the  more  particular 
problem — the  attitude  of  woman  to  art  is  almost 
always  an  external  attitude.  It  is  natural  to  the 
feminine  character  to  care  for  a  thing  for  the 
sake  of  what  it  produces  or  effects,  rather  than 
for  its  own  intrinsic  quality  ;  and,  when  art  comes 
under  her  criticism,  woman  is  naturally  disposed 
to  ask  questions  of  it,  and  to  look  for  influences 
from  it,  rather  than  to  accept  it  intuitively  for  its 
own  sake.  Now,  Christina  Rossetti  was  above  all 
things  else  a  woman.  Femininity  was  of  the 
essence  of  her  being,  and  when  she  was  thrown 
by  fortune,  first  of  all  into  a  general  concerted 
movement  of  men,  and  secondly  into  a  movement 
concerned  with  the  very  essentials  of  art,  she  took, 
inevitably,  the  woman's  way.  Slowly  but  surely 
her  personality  emerged  from  the  general  move- 
ment ;  slowly  but  surely  it  drifted  towards  that 
sort  of  "  criticism  of  life  "  which  was  essentially 
the  very  poetic  method  the  Pre-Raphaelites  were 
banded  together  to  avoid.  She  was  a  poet,  in- 
deed, but  she  was  a  woman  first ;  and  the 
predominant  influence  of  her  sex  asserted 


THE  WAY  OF  WOMANHOOD 

itself  emphatically  upon  every  tendency  of  her 
art. 

And  so  we  are  able  to  trace  in  her  poetry,  with 
really  singular  accuracy,  the  steady  growth  of 
womanhood  and  its  ideals.  She  sets  out  full  of 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  brotherhood 
for  the  beauty  and  warmth  of  life.  A  fresh  young 
impulse,  a  bright  and  animated  flush  upon  the 
face  of  the  world,  colour  her  earlier  lyrics  with 
rich  and  primary  tones.  With  girlhood  much  of 
the  illusion  passes.  Experience,  looking  out  upon 
the  world  through  the  eyes  of  womanhood,  sees, 
as  it  were,  a  dim  haze,  a  mist  rising  from  the 
meadows,  the  mist  of  disillusionment  and  failure. 
The  pleasures  of  the  morning  are  found  to  be 
transitory  ;  the  pomegranates  and  the  wine  have 
lost  their  savour  ;  a  cloud  is  over  the  sun.  A 
critic  has  very  happily  compared  the  world  of  her 
poetry  to  a  gentle,  bosky  landscape,  broken  up 
into  flowery  brakes,  with  a  churchyard  in  the 
distance  ;  and  the  picture  holds  good  of  all  her 
work,  with  this  exception,  that  as  she  herself 
journeys  across  the  meadows,  the  flowers  in  the 
dingle  grow  fewer,  and  the  churchyard  itself 
looms  larger  ;  till  at  last  she  comes  to  the  shadow 
of  the  lych-gate,  and  sits  down  upon  its  step,  and 
half  her  heart  is  with  the  "  grassy  barrows  of  the 
dead,"  and  only  half  (and  that  lost  in  remembrance) 
with  the  primroses  and  the  forget-me-nots  by  the 
stream.  In  short,  the  purpose  and  the  meaning  of 
life  become  her  insistent  theme,  and  the  love  of 
art,  for  its  own  sake,  grows  inevitably  less  and  less. 

She  was  a  woman  first  of  all,  and  she  was 
content  to  remain  a  woman  to  the  end.  Her  poetry, 
therefore,  has  no  quality  more  distinguishing 


CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI 


than  its  sincerity.  It  does  not  strive  nor  cry  :  it 
makes  no  effort  to  do  anything  foreign  to  its  own 
gentle,  tender  nature  ;  it  accepts  the  burden  of 
womanhood,  and  with  it  the  faith,  the  even, 
inspiring  devotion  which  is  always  a  true  woman's 
surest  weapon.  Here,  at  once,  she  separates  from 
her  great  contemporary  among  women  poets, 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning.  For,  when  we  come 
to  inquire  why  it  is  that  so  much  of  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing's poetry,  with  its  fiery  eloquence,  and  its 
"  headlong  "  advocacy  of  cause  and  reform,  proves 
upon  nearer  acquaintance  so  unsatisfying,  we 
are  more  and  more  assured  that  she  fails  because 
she  is  trying  to  make  her  poetry  do  more  than  it 
constitutionally  can  ;  because  she  is  trying,  in 
fact,  to  make  a  woman's  voice  thunder  like  a  man's. 
Christina  Rossetti  made  no  such  mistake  in  art, 
permitted  herself  no  such  liberties  with  artistic 
sincerity.  Her  devotional  poetry  is  the  poetry  of 
a  devout  woman  ;  not  of  a  Paul,  nor  of  an 
Apollos.  She  does  not  preach  ;  she  lays  down 
no  lines  for  others  to  follow  ;  she  simply  folds 
her  hands  before  the  altar  lights,  and  lifts  her 
eyes  to  the  rood.  And  criticism  itself  grows  silent 
before  the  prospect  of  a  woman  praying. 

"  Have  I  not  striven,  my  God,  and  watched  and 
prayed  ? 

Have  I  not  wrestled  in  mine  agony  ? 

Wherefore  dost  Thou  still  turn  Thy  face  from  me  ? 
Is  Thine  Arm  shortened  that  Thou  canst  not  aid  ? 
Thy  silence  breaks  my  heart ;  speak  though  to  up- 
braid, 

For  Thy  rebuke  yet  bids  us  follow  Thee. 

I  grope  and  grasp  not ;  gaze  but  cannot  see. 
When  out  of  sight  and  reach  my  bed  is  made, 


THE  THINGS  THAT  ARE  ETERNAL 

And  piteous  men  and  women  cease  to  blame, 
Whispering  and  wistful  of  my  gain  or  loss  ; 
Thou,  who  for  my  sake  once  didst  feel  the  Cross, 

Lord,  wilt  Thou  turn  and  look  upon  me  then, 
And  in  Thy  glory  bring  to  nought  my  shame, 

Confessing  me  to  angels  and  to  men  ?  " 

The  whole  humility  of  the  devout  soul  is  here  ; 
she  is  in  the  spirit  with  Herbert  and  with  Vaughan. 
Strange  to  reflect  how  this  grey,  hooded  figure, 
prostrate  in  adoration,  drew  its  earliest  impulses 
from  the  Pagan  paradise  of  mediasvalism  !  And 
yet  not  so  strange,  perhaps,  when  one  remembers 
the  permeating  influences  of  sex  upon  environ- 
ment and  ideal.  For,  after  all,  we  have  no  cold 
ascetic  here,  no  self-devoted  nun  who  has  broken 
free  from  the  world  to  dedicate  her  love  and  her 
enthusiasm  to  solitary  service.  Christina  Rossetti 
is  always  in  the  world,  if  seldom  altogether  of  it. 
The  flowers  and  fruit  are  still  bright  in  the 
orchard ;  the  dewy  meadows  have  still  their 
morning  scent ;  the  bird  is  still  singing  in  the 
hedgerow.  Only,  beyond  all  these  transitory 
joys: 

"  Passing  away,  saith  my  Soul,  passing  away — " 

beyond  them  all,  yet  comprehending  them  all, 
the  quiet  churchyard  and  the  cross  upon  the  spire 
whisper  of  a  rest  and  a  consolation  that  promise 
more  than  these.  And  stretching  out  hands 
towards  the  further  shore,  she  sings  of  Beauty 
that  transcends  all  types  and  shadows.  "  The 
things  which  are  seen  are  temporal ;  but  the 
things  which  are  not  seen  are  eternal." 


'53 


ROBERT  BUCHANAN 

THE  story  of  Robert  Buchanan's  literary 
life,  if  it  were  written  frankly  and  with 
knowledge,  would  present  a  record  of 
as  much  adventure  and  emotion  as  that  of  any 
of  his  own  adventurous  novels.  It  started  in  a 
spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  it  ran  the 
gamut  of  almost  all  the  varied  interests  of  the 
last  half  of  the  nineteenth  ;  it  joined  hands, 
either  in  friendship  or  in  combat,  with  most  of 
the  representative  writers  of  the  time,  and  it  was 
above  all  things  the  career  of  a  man  passionately 
interested  in  his  fellow-men,  a  creature  of  im- 
pulse, a  child  of  emotion,  capable  alike  of  generous 
friendship  and  of  equally  ungenerous  enmity  ; 
unreasoning,  unreasonable,  but  often  instinct- 
ively right,  and  generally  downright  and  sincere. 
Judged  externally,  it  would  be  pronounced  success- 
ful ;  for  while  Buchanan  came  up  to  London, 
like  the  waifs  and  Whittingtons  of  a  bygone  age, 
without  money  or  prospects,  he  passed  in  his 
time  through  most  of  the  phases  of  popularity 
and  material  comfort ;  he  had  a  hard  struggle 
as  a  boy,  but  he  enjoyed  in  his  manhood  more  of 
the  moderate  plenty  of  life  than  falls  to  the  lot 
of  many  men  of  greater  ability  and  equal  industry. 
And  yet  his  career  is  one  that  criticism  cannot 
regard  altogether  complacently,  for  Buchanan 
certainly  did  not  do  the  good  things  that  at 
the  outset  he  promised  to  do  ;  he  achieved  a  great 
deal,  but  only  a  small  portion  of  it  was  on  a  dis- 
tinctively high  level.  Mr.  William  Archer  has 

'54 


WHAT  THE  PUBLIC  WANTS 

said  that  he  was  "  guilty  of  the  most  unpardon- 
able sin  a  craftsman  can  commit — that  of  not 
doing  his  best."  But  this  is,  perhaps,  rather  too 
uncompromising  a  judgment ;  and  we  may  arrive 
at  a  juster  estimate  by  distinguishing  rather  more 
carefully  some  of  the  issues  and  necessities  of  the 
situation. 

Buchanan  arrived  in  London  (in  1860),  with 
the  romantic  confidence  of  boyhood,  "  to  seek 
his  fortune."  He  was  nineteen  years  old,  the  son 
of  a  Stafford  socialistic  missionary,  and  of  Scots 
descent.  He  had  been  educated  at  Glasgow  High 
School  and  University,  and  he  brought  with  him 
to  London  a  fellow  student  of  the  same  ambition, 
the  pair  having  sworn  comradeship  in  the  pursuit 
of  literary  fame.  The  story  of  the  early  struggles 
of  Buchanan  and  his  friend  David  Gray  is  gener- 
ally familiar.  It  is  the  story  of  privation  in  a  Grub- 
street  garret,  which  recalls  the  early  misfortunes 
of  Richard  Savage,  and  it  ended  for  one  of  the 
combatants  in  a  premature  and  pitiful  death. 
Buchanan's  was  the  stronger  temperament ;  he 
lived  through  the  lean  years  of  half -starvation, 
and  overcame  the  obstacles  which  bristle  about 
the  start  of  a  literary  career,  and  in  a  few  years 
he  was  making  his  way  steadily  upon  the  news- 
paper press.  Those,  however,  who  watched 
Buchanan's  career  closely  were  inclined  to  think 
that  the  experiences  of  those  early  days  in  London 
had  set  a  mark  upon  him  which  the  circum- 
stances of  later  life  never  wholly  obliterated. 
Privation  is  a  cruel  taskmistress,  and  in  those 
probationary  years  he  learnt  that  to  please  the 
public  you  must  provide  what  the  public  wants. 
Material  success  was  essential  to  one  in  Buchanan's 

'55 


ROBERT  BUCHANAN 


position.  He  had  not  the  provision  which  might 
have  enabled  him  to  choose  the  work  he  would 
have  preferred  ;  he  was  obliged  to  write  what 
he  could  find  a  market  for.  And  so  it  was  not, 
perhaps,  so  much  the  case  that  he  deliberately 
did  not  do  his  best,  as  that  he  fell  more  and  more 
unconsciously  into  the  habit  of  working  upon 
lines  which  he  saw  elsewhere  successful,  and  in 
which  he  knew  he  could  himself  succeed  most 
easily.  The  result  in  any  case  was  much  the  same  ; 
a  true  artist  was  wasted  in  the  necessary  pursuit 
of  popular  favour. 

For  the  unfortunate  part  of  this  compromise 
with  necessity  was  that  it  fostered  in  Buchanan 
the  very  defects  to  which  his  work  was  most 
fatally  prone.  He  was,  as  we  have  said,  a  creature 
of  emotion,  and  his  temperament  was  always 
swaying  between  emotional  excesses.  When  for 
a  moment  the  balance  lay  level,  he  would  pro- 
duce, as  he  often  did  in  his  early  career,  poems 
of  intense  and  poignant  humanity,  genuine  and 
sincere  utterances  of  a  man  of  high  feeling  and 
deep  sympathy.  But  the  balance  was  momentary, 
and  with  its  decline  he  plunged  at  once  into  melo- 
dramatic exaggeration.  Over-emphasis  both  of 
detraction  and  admiration  marred  his  loyalty  to 
what  were  often  most  commendable  causes,  and 
in  his  creative  work  the  same  over-emphasis 
dragged  him  into  lurid  and  hyperbolical  effects 
which  simply  defeated  their  own  object.  He 
became  the  victim  of  untutored  emotion,  playing 
into  the  hands  of  the  crowd. 

And  yet  he  was  at  heart  a  true  poet,  of  the 
vigorous  and  emotional  order.  He  began  to  write, 
perhaps,  in  an  unfortunate  time;  for  the  spasmodic, 
156 


THE  LINE  OF  LEAST  RESISTANCE 

sentimental,  and  rather  formless  poetic  move- 
ment of  the  'sixties  was  precisely  the  sort  of 
movement  to  call  out  in  him  the  qualities  which 
he  most  needed  to  restrain,  and  he  yielded  him- 
self readily  to  its  fascination.  A  natural  melodist, 
he  was  content  with  loose  and  flaccid  metrical 
excesses,  and  his  harmony  often  dissolves  itself 
into  the  mechanical  jingle  of  the  barrel-organ. 
A  rapid  and  volcanic  thinker,  he  indulged  himself 
in  unshapely  diffusions  ;  form  became  the  last 
thing  to  be  considered ;  effect,  effect,  and  always 
effect  was  the  mainspring  of  his  work.  Later  on, 
too,  he  assumed  subjects  far  beyond  the  range  of 
his  imagination,  and  the  nebulous  and  rather 
pretentious  parables  in  which  he  attempted  to 
set  forth  some  sort  of  philosophy  of  the  divine 
will  are  found,  on  careful  analysis,  to  be  often 
very  tawdry  and  always  theatrical.  But  poetry 
was  undoubtedly  his  sphere.  Here,  more  than 
anywhere  else,  he  found  expression  for  the  most 
humane  and  sincere  trait  in  his  nature — his 
generous  care  and  sympathy  for  the  sufferings  of 
the  unfortunate.  Here,  too,  he  often  wrote  with 
persuasive  simplicity  and  directness.  It  was  in 
his  early  poetry  that  he  held  out  promise  richer, 
alas  !  than  any  later  fulfilment. 

Poetry,  however,  is  a  poor  staff  upon  which 
to  support  a  household  ;  and  Buchanan,  like  so 
many  others,  turned  in  time  to  the  more  popular 
field  of  fiction.  Some  of  his  earlier  novels  are  full 
of  power,  even  if  it  is  rather  crudely  employed. 
"  The  Shadow  of  the  Sword  "  is  not  without 
taint  of  his  besetting  sin  ;  it  is  over-emphatic 
and  over-eager  ;  but  it  has  fine  passages  and  is 
marked  by  open  and  broad  sincerity.  "  God  and 


ROBERT  BUCHANAN 


the  Man,"  again,  has  theatrical  faults  (indeed,  it 
was  afterwards  recast  as  a  melodrama) ;  but 
there  are  scenes  of  abounding  vigour,  and  in 
working  up  emotion  to  a  fever  heat  Buchanan  was 
not  only  adroit,  but  electrically  effective.  Still,  as 
time  went  on,  Buchanan's  fiction  declined  in 
quality  more  than  any  other  side  of  his  work.  As 
he  began  to  give  his  attention  more  and  more  to 
the  stage,  the  influence  of  the  theatre  affected 
his  fiction  to  such  a  degree  that  one  seemed  to  see 
in  every  new  novel  the  process  by  which  it  had 
been  hastily  recast  from  a  first  rough  dramatic 
draft.  No  doubt,  this  was  not  actually  the  case  ; 
and  many  of  the  novels  which  looked  like  re- 
adjusted melodramas  may  have  begun  and  ended 
their  history  in  their  final  form  of  fiction.  Still, 
the  pervading  influence  of  the  theatre  was  fatal 
to  good  work  in  the  novel,  the  dialogue  became 
stagey,  the  effects  suggested  the  footlights,  and 
there  was  no  "  conviction  "  in  the  whole  of  the 
workmanship. 

Meanwhile,  Buchanan  was  gaining  much  popu- 
larity in  the  theatre.  It  cannot,  indeed,  be  said  that 
he  enriched  the  stage  with  literature,  but  he  turned 
out  many  workmanlike  dramas  which  served 
their  purpose,  and  were  upon  the  whole  healthy 
and  vigorous  enough  in  tone.  Sentimentality,  a 
perverted  form  of  his  emotionalism,  warped  some 
of  his  effects  ;  and  in  his  adaptations  of  Fielding 
and  Richardson  in  particular  he  imported  into 
the  stage  versions  of  the  eighteenth  century  novel 
a  sugary  sort  of  sentiment  which  was  not  much  in 
harmony  with  the  virile  savour  of  the  originals. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  was  thoroughly  aware  of  the 
value  of  stagecraft,  and  some  of  his  melodramas, 
158 


THE  LOVE  OF  COMBAT 


such,  for  example,  as  the  adapted  "  Man's 
Shadow,"  were  in  their  theatrical  way  genuinely 
impressive.  It  is  doubtful,  however,  if  any  of 
them  would  stand  literary  criticism,  if  printed  ; 
and  this,  it  need  scarcely  be  said,  is  rather  a  serious 
consideration  when  applied  to  the  work  of  a 
professedly  literary  man. 

Finally,  some  reference  is  demanded  to  Buch- 
anan's excursions  into  literary  controversy,  the 
best-remembered  instance  of  which  is  his  attack 
upon  the  Pre-Raphaelites  in  the  article  he  called 
"  The  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry."  Buchanan  was, 
of  course,  no  critic  ;  the  violences  of  his  temper- 
ament were  against  him.  But  he  was  a  tremendous 
fighter,  and  he  loved  controversy,  if  not  for  its 
own  sake,  at  any  rate  for  the  opportunity  it  gave  him 
of  venting  opinions  which  increased  in  emphasis 
with  every  outburst  of  opposition.  As  a  com- 
batant he  lacked  every  grace  and  chivalry  of  the 
lists  ;  urbanity  and  persuasiveness  were  appar- 
ently distasteful  to  him,  for  he  lost  no  oppor- 
tunity of  outraging  them  with  diversities  of 
violence.  His  attack  upon  Rossetti  was  quite 
without  method  or  stability  of  judgment ;  it 
wounded  its  victim  to  the  quick,  but  it  probably 
persuaded  no  one  of  its  justice.  "  The  Coming 
Terror,"  a  volume  of  controversial  essays  which 
aroused  some  interest  more  than  twenty  years 
ago,  contains  some  sensible  ideas  intermingled 
with  a  great  deal  of  indiscriminate  buffeting  of  the 
air,  and  this  defect  is  representative  of  all  his 
critical  arguments.  Yet  his  enthusiasm  was  as 
generous  in  praise  as  it  was  violent  in  difference. 
The  consideration  of  dates  renders  it  unlikely 
that  Buchanan  spoke  by  the  book  when  he  said 

159 


ROBERT  BUCHANAN 


that  he  was  one  of  the  first  to  give  Browning 
welcome  at  a  time  when  all  the  critical  world  was 
contemning  him  ;  but  it  is  at  least  true  that  among 
the  voices  raised  to  proclaim  a  new  talent  Buch- 
anan's was  often  among  the  earliest  and  the  most 
hearty.  His  view  was  not  always  sound,  and  the 
hyperbole  with  which  it  was  expressed  was  almost 
invariably  unsound,  but  he  gave  encouragement 
to  many  literary  beginners  at  a  time  when  they 
needed  it  most  urgently.  Here,  too,  perhaps  the 
memories  of  his  own  early  struggles  prompted 
him,  and  to  a  better  purpose. 

We  take  leave,  then,  of  Robert  Buchanan  with 
a  sense  of  kindly  and  sincere  regret.  He  was  a  man 
of  real  talent  a,nd  of  generous  emotion,  driven, 
as  we  believe,  by  the  force  of  circumstances  to 
make  less  of  his  abilities  than  might  have  been 
made  under  advantages  of  leisure  and  of  com- 
petency. The  struggle  of  life  affects  different 
men  in  different  ways.  Some  go  down  under  it 
altogether  ;  some,  but  these  are  very  few,  rise 
above  it  and  seem  to  thrive  upon  opposition  ; 
others,  and  these  the  great  majority,  compromise 
with  it,  and  are  content  to  swim  with  the  tide. 
Buchanan  went  with  the  tide  and  the  majority. 
The  compromise  brought  him  success  and  his 
reward  ;  but  it  would  be  injustice  to  his  memory 
to  pretend  that,  under  other  circumstances  and 
with  other  advantages,  the  success  might  not  have 
been  on  higher  levels  and  the  reward  itself  more 
enduring. 


1 60 


GEORGE  GISSING 

THE  true  function  of  the  novel  is  still 
one  of  those  vexed  questions  upon  which 
criticism  seems  constitutionally  incapable 
of  satisfying  itself.  Other  problems  in  literary 
ethics  come  up  from  time  to  time,  as  taste 
crystallises,  for  controversy  and  decision  ;  under- 
go their  little  hour  of  hesitancy,  and  are  pigeon- 
holed for  future  reference  ;  but  the  question  of 
the  whole  duty  of  the  novelist  is  just  as  open 
to-day  as  it  was  in  the  age  of  "  Pamela,"  and 
"  Joseph  Andrews."  Here  perpetually  the  in- 
extinguishable conflict  between  realism  and 
idealism — that  conflict  which  began  with  the 
birth  of  criticism  and  seems  likely  to  survive  the 
taste  for  creation  itself — rages  with  unabated 
ardour.  Here,  alone,  in  the  field  of  fiction,  any- 
thing like  stability  of  judgment  seems  almost 
unattainable.  What  should  the  novel  be  ?  What 
is  its  proper  aim  and  limitation  ?  Is  the  novelist 
to  be  a  preacher,  torturing  himself  to  illustrate 
some  dogma  or  to  point  some  moral ;  or  is  he  to 
accept  the  gentler  duty  of  entertainment,  "  taking 
tired  people,"  as  Mr.  Kipling  picturesquely 
puts  it,  "  to  the  islands  of  the  blest,"  and  entirely 
content  with  his  art  if  he  has  lured  his  audience 
into  an  hour's  forgetfulness  of  the  rush  and  worry 
of  modern  conditions  and  modern  responsi- 
bilities ?  Or,  to  put  it  a  little  differently,  is  the 
novelist  to  interpose  between  man  and  his  environ- 
ment some  softening  veil  of  fancy;  or  is  he  to 
draw  life  as  he  sees  it,  coldly  and  with  calculation, 
161  M 


GEORGE  GISSING 


sacrificing  pleasure  to  the  truth,  and  telling  over 
and  over  again  a  grey,  dispiriting  story  to  what 
must  soon  become  a  tired,  and  perhaps  a  rather 
irresponsive  world  ?  It  is  an  old  problem,  and 
threadbare,  but  somehow  or  other  time  and 
argument  seem  to  bring  us  very  little  nearer  to 
its  solution. 

And  yet  the  question  is  really  a  vital  one  ;  for 
until  the  novelist  has  faced  it,  and  decided  with 
which  of  the  forces  he  intends  to  range  himsdf, 
his  work  is  almost  certain  to  lack  sincerity  and 
effect.  Indeed,  it  would  not  be  too  much  to  say 
that  that  dissatisfying  lack  of  fibre  which  every 
critical  reader  must  confess  to  finding  in  so  much 
of  the  well-meant  fiction  of  the  time,  is  entirely 
due  to  the  failure  of  the  author  to  get  his  issues 
clear  at  the  outset,  and  to  understand  the  point  of 
view  from  which  he  himself  regards  life  and  its 
intricate  complexities.  Analyse  an  unsatisfying 
novel  to  its  radical  constituents,  and  you  will 
always  find  insincerity  at  the  root  of  all  its  evil. 
Obliquity  of  vision,  confusion  of  attitude,  false 
sentiment,  ill-conceived  character,  blurred  pro- 
portion— all  these  elementary  faults  of  the  medi- 
ocre novel  spring,  in  the  first  instance,  from  the 
author's  own  want  of  literary  sincerity.  How  can 
a  man  hope  to  produce  a  reasonable  picture  of 
our  complex  and  sensitive  modern  life  until  he 
has  placed  himself  in  some  definite  relation  to  its 
problems  ;  until,  in  short,  he  has  himself  felt 
and  lived  the  passions  and  incidents  which  he  sets 
himself  to  describe  :  lived  them,  not,  of  course, 
necessarily  in  the  actual  arena  of  action,  but 
at  least  in  that  fortified  castle  of  the  mind,  in 
which  sympathy  enables  a  man  to  bear  a  friend's 

162 


REALISM  AND  IDEALISM  ONCE  MORE 

infirmities  just  as  poignantly  as  he  would  bear  his 
own.  Different  men,  of  course,  will  bear  the  same 
infirmity  in  different  ways  ;  and  life,  no  less  than 
art,  has  room  for  its  realists  as  well  as  its  idealists. 
But  no  man,  it  is  safe  to  say,  will  ever  live  his 
life  out  profitably  who  has  not  fought,  in  his 
imagination,  the  battles  which  others  have  to 
fight,  in  reality,  from  day  to  day  ;  and  no  man 
will  ever  issue  from  the  study  of  books  an  artist 
of  any  power  or  influence,  who  has  not  made  his 
peace  with  that  first  necessity  of  the  artist,  and 
taken  up  his  own  definite  and  sincere  attitude 
towards  the  problems  which  he  has  to  suggest. 
Art  raises  the  old  cry  among  her  children : 
"  Choose  you  this  day  whom  ye  will  serve  "  ; 
and,  until  the  answer  is  given  and  the  choice 
made,  she  will  tell  them  nothing  of  her  secrets. 

George  Gissing  was  one  of  that  small  body  of 
contemporary  novelists  whose  career  leaves  no 
room  for  question  about  the  sincerity  or  com- 
pleteness of  their  choice.  He  died  in  what  ought 
to  have  been  his  prime,  just  at  the  moment  when 
a  long  course  of  comparative  disregard  and  very 
positive  personal  discomfort  seemed  on  the  point 
of  emerging  into  high  reputation  and  intellectual 
ease.  For  years  happiness  had  been  beyond  his 
grasp,  and  popularity  had  seemed  to  evade  him. 
He  saw  men  of  much  inferior  talent  pass  him  in 
the  race  for  public  favour  ;  he  knew — he  must 
have  known — that  only  a  small  concession  to 
popular  taste,  only  a  slight  deviation  from  literary 
sincerity  and  his  chosen  path,  was  needed  to  place 
him  at  once  among  the  vociferously  acclaimed, 
and  to  bring  him  affluence  and  notoriety. 
But,  if  the  temptation  ever  presented  itself  to 
163 


GEORGE  GISSING 


him,  it  was  never  for  a  moment  entertained.  A 
truer  artist,  a  more  conscientious  and  sincere 
workman  than  George  Gissing  never  lived.  He 
made  no  compromise  with  fortune,  permitted 
no  suspicion  of  disloyalty  to  his  own  ideal.  He 
ranged  himself  from  the  outset  with  those  who, 
out  of  the  very  integrity  of  their  point  of  view, 
are  forced,  as  it  were,  "  to  paint  the  thing  as  they 
see  it  for  the  God  of  things  as  they  are  "  ;  and  it 
was  simply  impossible  for  his  open  and  honest 
nature  to  paint  or  to  imagine  anything  else.  The 
last  years  of  his  life  were  gladdened  by  a  growing 
sense  of  recognition  :  even  in  the  glibber  forms 
of  journalism  it  was  no  longer  permissible  to 
speak  of  George  Gissing  otherwise  than  with 
respect.  But  he  died  too  soon  to  taste  that  fuller 
approbation  which  the  best  of  his  work  is  certain 
to  command  from  all  who  are  capable  of  appreci- 
ating true  and  vital  literature  ;  he  died  too  soon 
to  enjoy  his  elementary  deserts.  And  the  sense 
of  this  prematurity  of  loss  adds  an  even  greyer 
tint  to  the  atmosphere  of  a  life  which,  from  its 
start  to  within  sight  of  the  last  turn  in  the  road, 
had  more  than  its  share  of  mist  and  rain.  "  The 
sense  of  tears  in  mortal  things  "  was  never  more 
keenly  felt,  or  more  bravely  faced,  than  it  was  in 
this  manful,  strenuous,  and  undiverted  career  of 
work  and  sympathy. 

It  is  often  curiously  instructive  to  notice  how 
widely  a  man's  first  literary  inspirations  differ 
from  his  subsequent  development.  Gissing,  it 
has  been  said,  drew  life  as  he  found  it  (it  is  the  first 
truth  about  him) ;  but,  before  a  man  begins  to 
write  at  all,  books  have  always  given  the  impulse 
towards  literary  expression.  And  no  one  who  has 
164 


THE  DICKENSIAN  ATMOSPHERE 

read  that  warm,  keen  tribute  to  Dickens  in  the 
"  Victorian  Era  Series,"  and  noticed  the  intimate 
sympathy  between  the  older  and  the  younger 
writer,  can  doubt  that  the  earliest  impetus  to 
literature  assailed  Gissing  from  the  pages  of 
"  David  Copperfield  "  and  "  Great  Expectations." 
Charles  Dickens  and  George  Gissing !  Could 
there  be  a  more  complete  contrast,  if  the  two  are 
viewed  superficially  ?  On  the  one  hand,  we  seem 
to  see  the  bubbling,  carolling,  inveterate  optimist, 
arm  in  arm  with  good  humour  and  the  spirit  of 
joy,  taking  the  road  for  himself  with  swinging 
gait ;  and  on  the  other,  hugging  the  shadow, 
avoiding  the  crowd,  the  sad-eyed  watcher  in  the 
twilight,  alert,  observant,  sensitive,  but  certain 
only  of  the  very  futility  of  merriment  and  illusion. 
Look  below  the  surface,  however,  and  you  find 
at  once  a  host  of  resemblances  only  more  astonish- 
ing than  the  dissimilarities.  Both,  to  begin  with, 
inhabited  the  same  world.  Both  of  them  knew 
every  street  of  that  decaying,  foggy  district  that 
stretches  north  of  the  Gray's  Inn  Road  towards 
Pentonville  and  the  ghostly  wraith  of  Sadler's 
Wells  ;  both  of  them  were  at  home  in  the  less- 
known  reaches  of  the  East  End  ;  and  to  both  of 
them  the  people  who  live  in  these  regions  were 
the  people  best  worth  writing  about.  One  of  the 
soundest  of  Gissing's  novels  is  called  "  The 
Unclassed,"  and  in  his  preface  to  that  book  he 
describes  the  world  that  his  people  inhabit  as 
"  the  limbo  external  to  society  "  ;  the  world, 
that  is,  of  men  and  women  who  are  neither  well- 
bred  and  notable  on  the  one  hand,  nor  criminally 
vicious  and  irreconcilable  on  the  other  ;  the  men 
and  women  who  bear  no  "  statistic  badge,"  but 

165 


GEORGE  GISSING 


are  simply  members  of  the  vast,  striving,  toiling, 
unheroic  multitude  that  makes  up  the  tale  of 
British  citizenship.  Now,  these  are  precisely 
Dickens 's  people,  too.  He  drew  them  as  he  saw 
them,  and  Gissing,  in  his  turn,  drew  them  as  he 
saw  them.  Both  men,  according  to  their  lights, 
were  realists,  and  are  united,  across  the  wide  gulf 
of  almost  opposite  idiosyncrasies,  by  their  common 
allegiance  to  the  same  literary  ideal.  The  very 
width  of  their  divergence  is  only  another  example 
of  the  infinite  and  consolatory  brotherhood  of 
art. 

Current  criticism  has  a  trick,  in  talking  of  the 
uses  of  realism  in  art,  which  is  very  misleading 
and  erroneous.  It  is  a  habit  of  critics  to  praise  a 
realistic  artist  as  one  who  draws  life  absolutely 
naked  and  in  its  essentials,  and  to  make  it  a  special 
virtue  in  his  method  that  he  is  supposed  to  permit 
no  shadow  of  his  own  personality  to  obtrude 
between  his  subject  and  his  audience.  Whether 
such  a  method  would,  or  would  not,  be  artisti- 
cally sound,  is  an  open  question  ;  but,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  it  is  a  question  that  can  never  arise,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  no  artist  ever  yet  drew  or  wrote, 
with  the  least  pretension  to  artistic  quality,  who 
did  not  continually  obtrude  his  own  personality 
in  precisely  the  fashion  which  a  certain  class  of 
critic  seeks  to  deprecate.  Just  as  the  mechanical 
reproducer  of  a  picture  places  between  his  subject 
and  the  plate  on  which  the  subject  is  to  be  repro- 
duced a  sort  of  screen  of  fine  meshes,  which  gives 
value  and  distinctness  to  the  details,  so  the  literary 
artist  always  and  inevitably  interposes,  between 
his  world  and  the  reader  to  whom  he  introduces  it, 
the  film  or  screen  of  his  own  personality,  filtered 
166 


THE  UNDER-WORLD 


through  which  every  separate  tone  and  line  takes 
the  colour  of  his  own  temperament  and  sensi- 
bility. And  the  stronger  the  temperament,  the 
more  compelling  the  art ;  so  that  all  great  and 
enduring  work,  however  apparently  naturalistic, 
owes  its  qualities  of  greatness  and  permanency 
precisely  to  the  force  and  individuality  of  the  man 
who  created  it.  This  would  seem  a  platitude,  were 
it  not  that  it  is  so  frequently  contradicted  by  the 
current  language  of  criticism. 

When  once  it  is  appreciated,  however,  it  ex- 
plains the  whole  principle  of  literary  creation  : 
explains,  too,  how  it  comes  that  a  temperament 
like  that  of  George  Gissing,  nurtured  upon  the 
genius  of  Dickens,  can  yet  go  down  into  Dickens's 
world,  with  its  eyes  open,  and  produce  a  picture 
so  extraordinarily  different,  for  example,  as  the 
world  of  Waymark  is  from  the  world  of  Micawber 
and  the  Jellabys.  After  all,  the  worlds  are  just  the 
same  externally.  "  The  long,  unlovely  street," 
whose  vista  melts  in  everlasting  haze,  the  street 
of  unclean  thresholds  and  rusty  knockers,  where 
the  milkcan  and  the  newspaper  stand  out  on  the 
doorstep  in  the  damp  of  Sunday  morning,  till  the 
bells  are  chiming  for  service  ;  when  at  last  a  lean 
arm,  clad  in  a  draggled  wrapper,  thrusts  itself 
with  prehensile  clutch  round  the  half-open  door, 
through  which  a  faint  suggestion  flutters  of 
frowsy  hair  in  curling-pins.  So  Emma  Micawber 
prepared  Traddles's  breakfast ;  so  Mrs.  Peachey 
kept  house  for  her  complaining  sisters.  And  yet, 
how  different  the  two  worlds  appear  under  the 
touch  of  divergent  talents  !  To  Dickens,  over- 
flowing with  pictorial  imagination,  even  the  most 
unideal  aspect  of  a  London  street  was  alive  with 
167 


GEORGE  GISSING 


glow  and  vivacity.  He  did  not  consciously  carica- 
ture what  he  saw  ;  indeed,  his  detail  has  been 
proved  by  cold  photography  to  be  unimpeachably 
true  to  fact ;  he  only  projected  himself  and  his 
amazing  "  animism  "  into  everything  that  came 
in  his  way.  For  him  the  milkcan  was  rapping  out 
its  demand  to  be  taken  in,  as  the  wind  shook  its 
loose  handle  :  the  newspaper  was  fluttering  to 
get  off  into  a  more  congenial  corner.  And  when 
the  woman  herself  looked  round  the  door,  he 
would  find  something  of  homely  comfort  in  the 
kettle  that  was  singing  on  the  fire  beyond,  some- 
thing worthy  of  maternal  solicitude  and  love  in 
the  squalling,  neglected  infant  in  its  cot  upstairs. 
This,  too,  was  realism,  elaborately  constructed 
and  observed,  but  touched  to  colour  everywhere 
by  the  intercepting  haze  of  a  genial  and  naturally 
ecstatic  temperament. 

Perhaps  it  is  true  that,  by  the  time  Gissing 
came  to  observe  the  same  scenes,  it  was  no  longer 
possible,  in  the  gradually  moving  give-and-take 
of  literary  taste,  for  good  humour  and  make- 
believe  to  gild  observation  with  its  genial  tinge  ; 
and  that  some  sort  of  change  of  front  was  in- 
evitable. One  thing  at  least  is  certain.  Gissing 
saw  the  same  scenes  through  the  medium  of  an 
actually  opposite  temperament.  The  ruddy- 
golden  screen  was  replaced  by  one,  not  indeed 
of  impenetrable  grey  (as  some  of  his  critics  would 
have  us  believe),  but  at  least  of  almost  unrelieved 
monotone.  Where  the  light  fell  through  it,  its 
rays  served  only  to  emphasise  the  surrounding 
gloom.  In  short,  as  every  kindly  but  intelligent 
critic  of  Gissing  has  told  us  over  and  over 
again,  his  books  make  sombre  reading.  And  to 
168 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  REALIST 

understand  the  temperament  one  must  know 
something  of  the  man  himself.  There  are  cases, 
such  as  that  of  the  purely  fantastic  idealist,  where 
personal  inquiry  is  not  only  unnecessary,  but  im- 
pertinent ;  for  here  the  man's  life  and  his  life- 
work  are  apt  to  be  so  completely  separate,  that 
criticism  of  the  latter  is  likely  to  be  more  sure  of 
its  ground  if  it  leaves  the  former  alone  altogether. 
But  with  a  talent  like  that  of  Gissing,  so  concen- 
trated, so  sincere,  and,  above  all,  so  constant  in 
the  imputation  of  himself  upon  the  world  of  his 
fancy,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  appreciate  the  work 
without  knowing  something  of  the  man  and  his 
method.  And,  as  in  the  case  of  all  true  artists,  such 
knowledge  only  increases  our  sympathy  and  respect 
for  the  indomitable  sincerity  of  the  effort.  "What- 
ever record  leaps  to  light,"  the  work  only  appears 
the  worthier,  the  ambition  only  shows  the  nobler. 
In  appreciating  the  external  influences  that 
helped  to  mould  his  work,  there  is  happily  no 
need  to  be  unduly  inquisitive.  He  has  told  us 
himself  all  that  he  cared  for  the  outside  world  to 
know,  and  that  is  abundantly  sufficient  to  explain 
his  temperament.  George  Gissing  was  meant  by 
nature  to  be  a  scholar  and  a  recluse  ;  he  has  all 
the  true  bookman's  love  for  the  comely  volume, 
all  the  student's  passion  for  the  perfect  phrase. 
He  was  meant  to  be  happy  in  a  well-filled  library 
among  the  classics  that  he  loved  ;  his  delicate 
constitution  demanded  a  simple,  easy  life  ;  his 
tastes  clamoured  for  repose.  Fate,  on  the  contrary, 
threw  him  into  the  arena,  to  fight  with  the 
Ephesian  beasts  of  hunger  and  privation.  For 
years  he  lived  a  life  of  sordid  discomfort,  and 
often  of  cruel  want,  toiling  against  every  difficulty 
169 


GEORGE  GISSING 


among  surroundings  bitterly  and  disastrously 
uncongenial.  In  "  The  Private  Papers  of  Henry 
Ryecroft,"  he  has  given  us  a  poignant,  but  in  no 
way  vindictive  picture  of  that  painful  period. 
Since  Gissing's  death  it  has  been  stated  that  the 
"  Ryecroft  "  papers  were  not  strictly  autobio- 
graphical ;  and  if  by  this  it  is  meant  that  every 
separate  incident  is  not  a  photographic  fact,  the 
criticism,  no  doubt,  is  true  enough.  But  Gissing 
himself  admitted  that  the  general  impression  of 
the  book  was  that  of  his  own  life,  and  that  many 
of  the  events  described  were  deliberately  and 
carefully  restored  from  his  recollections.  And 
indeed,  no  sensitive  reader  can  fail  to  feel  the 
intimate  "  actuality  "  of  the  record. 

Here,  then,  we  see  Gissing  as  he  was,  when  all 
the  formative  influences  of  life  were  at  work 
upon  his  nature.  Imprisoned  in  a  London  lodging 
for  sheer  lack  of  means  to  travel ;  his  fancy 
wandering  over  seas,  while  his  body  was  chained 
to  his  desk  ;  he  was  perpetually  at  work,  repro- 
ducing a  world  for  which  he  had  at  heart  an  in- 
stinctive distaste.  Holidays  came  for  other  people, 
but  never,  in  those  days,  for  himself. 

"  At  times,  indeed,  I  seem  all  but  to  have  forgotten 
that  people  went  away  for  holiday.  In  those  poor 
parts  of  the  town  where  I  dwelt,  season  made  no 
perceptible  difference  ;  there  were  no  luggage-laden 
cabs  to  remind  me  of  joyous  journeys  ;  the  folk  about 
me  went  daily  to  their  toil  as  usual,  and  so  did  I.  I 
remember  afternoons  of  languor,  when  books  were  a 
weariness,  and  no  thought  could  be  squeezed  out  of 
the  drowsy  brain  ;  then  would  I  betake  myself  to 
one  of  the  parks,  and  find  refreshment  without  any 
enjoyable  sense  of  change.  Heavens,  how  I  laboured 
in  those jiays  !  " 

170 


NEW  GRUB  STREET 


The  work,  he  says,  was  cheerfully  undertaken, 
with  a  constant  determination  not  to  be  beaten 
in  the  battle  of  life,  but  the  surroundings  were 
depressing  enough  to  have  broken  the  spirit  of 
many  a  stronger  man. 

"  I  see  that  alley  hidden  on  the  west  side  of  Totten- 
ham Court-road,  where,  after  living  in  a  back  bed- 
room on  the  top  floor,  I  had  to  exchange  for  the  front 
cellar  ;  there  was  a  difference,  if  I  remember  rightly, 
of  sixpence  a  week,  and  sixpence,  in  those  days,  was 
a  very  great  consideration — why,  it  meant  a  couple  of 
meals  (I  once  found  sixpence  in  the  street,  and  had 
an  exultation  which  is  vivid  in  me  at  this  moment). 
The  front  cellar  was  stone-floored  ;  its  furniture  was 
a  table,  a  chair,  a  wash-stand,  and  a  bed  ;  the  window, 
which  of  course  had  never  been  cleaned  since  it  was 
put  in,  received  light  through  a  flat  grating  in  the 
alley  above.  Here  I  lived  ;  here  I  wrote.  Yes,  '  liter- 
ary work  '  was  done  at  that  filthy  deal  table,  on  which, 
by-the-bye,  lay  my  Homer,  my  Shakespeare,  and  the 
few  other  books  I  then  possessed.  At  night,  as  I  lay 
in  bed,  I  used  to  hear  the  tramp,  tramp  of  a  posse  of 
policemen  who  passed  along  the  alley  on  their  way 
to  relieve  guard  ;  their  heavy  feet  sometimes  sounded 
on  the  grating  above  my  window." 

It  was  among  such  domestic  discomforts  as  these 
that  "  New  Grub  Street  "  was  feverishly  written, 
in  that  fine,  delicate  manuscript  with  which  his 
correspondents  were  familiar.  He  is  said  to  have 
completed  this  particular  book  in  six  weeks, 
toiling  at  his  desk  for  ten  hours  a  day,  scarcely 
speaking  to  a  fellow-creature  all  the  time,  and 
selling  his  favourite  books  to  second-hand  dealers 
in  order  to  get  the  wherewithal  to  buy  the  simplest 
food.  Here,  strangely  enough,  he  followed  exactly 
the  experience  of  the  boy  Dickens  ;  but  the  loss 
171 


GEORGE  GISSING 


of  such  silent  companions  must  have  been  harder 
to  the  man  than  to  the  child,  more  particularly 
when  one  remembers  that  many  of  these  books, 
like  a  certain  treasured  and  dog-eared  "  Tibullus," 
were  bought  at  the  cost  of  a  dinner.  For  on  the 
day  when  he  acquired  this  precious  volume  for 
sixpence  at  an  old  bookshop  in  Goodge  Street,  he 
had  to  be  content  with  bread  and  butter  for  four- 
and-twenty  hours. 

Well,  at  the  time  his  native  courage  carried 
him  through  these  distractions  with  a  good  heart, 
but  in  later  years  the  memory  of  them  hurt  him 
to  the  quick.  One  of  his  friends,  Mr.  Noel  Ainslie, 
records  the  fact  that  there  was  a  certain  London 
lodging-house  which  Gissing  could  never  bring 
himself  to  revisit.  "  It  was  an  old  house  with  a 
little  balcony,  and  you  can  still  see  it,"  he  said, 

"  as  you  walk  up ;  but  I  turn  my  head  away 

whenever  I  pass  the  end  of  the  street,  for  I  cannot 
bear  to  look  at  that  window."  This  sort  of  after- 
math of  bitterness  is,  of  course,  a  common  ex- 
perience of  the  sensitive.  Tennyson  felt  it;  so  too 
did  Dickens,  in  a  very  marked  degree.  Bitter 
memories  of  the  kind  get  burnt  into  the  brain, 
and  every  detail  of  suffering  is  reproduced  even 
against  the  will.  But  this  is  not  the  only  nor  the 
chief  effect  of  such  experience  upon  a  delicate, 
literary  temperament.  Every  intelligent  watcher 
of  life  in  city  streets  will  have  noticed  how  much 
quicker  and  sharper  in  observation  are  the  children 
of  the  gutter  than  those  of  the  sheltered  home ; 
hunger,  thirst,  and  the  struggle  for  survival  are 
wonderful  teachers  in  the  school  of  compre- 
hension. Above  all  faculties,  that  of  swift  and 
accurate  observation  of  detail  seems  positively 
172 


THE  REALIST  IN  SEARCH  OF  "  COPY  " 

to  be  fostered  by  want  and  privation  ;  the  eye, 
in  search  of  necessities,  becomes  abnormally 
alert,  the  brain  abnormally  accurate  in  registra- 
tion. Gissing,  like  so  many  others  who  have  under- 
gone the  same  discipline,  at  once  developed  this 
nervous,  palpitating  faculty.  His  sense  of  detail 
is  extraordinary ;  he  notices  everything,  and 
notices  it  with  the  "  lean  and  hungry  look,"  the 
sleepless  watchfulness  of  the  waiting  Cassius. 
At  first  he  had  only  to  describe  what  lay  around 
him  ;  but,  as  his  field  widened,  it  was  necessary 
to  cover  new  ground,  and  in  no  single  detail  did 
he  ever  trust  his  imagination.  He  must  see  the 
thing  itself,  watch  it,  and  record  every  smallest 
particle  of  its  development.  It  is  said  that  he  would 
loaf  of  an  evening  in  the  East  End  among  the 
barrows  of  the  costermongers,  would  smoke 
many  a  pipe  in  silent  contemplation  by  the  ingle 
of  a  beer-house,  would  spend  a  night  in  the  gallery 
of  a  slum-side  theatre,  always  assiduously  ob- 
serving and  gathering  "  copy."  Again,  if  fuller 
experience  were  needed,  he  would  change  his 
lodging  to  fit  the  scene  of  the  novel  he  was  writing, 
hiding  now  in  the  lower  Lambeth  reaches,  and 
again  mixing  in  the  mixed  society  of  a  Camberwell 
boarding-house. 

"  I  had  a  goal  before  me,  and  not  the  goal  of  the 
average  man.  Even  when  pinched  with  hunger,  I  did 
not  abandon  my  purposes,  which  were  of  the  mind. 
But  contrast  that  starved  lad  in  his  slum  lodging  with 
any  fair  conception  of  intelligent  and  zealous  youth, 
and  one  feels  that  a  dose  of  swift  poison  would  have 
been  the  right  remedy  for  such  squalid  ills." 

Such  was  the  making  of  a  realist ;  and,  while 
of  course  it  resulted  in  an  impeccable  veracity  of 

173 


GEORGE  GISSING 


workmanship,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  it  had 
its  artistic  drawbacks.  Gissing's  observation  was 
actually  too  comprehensive,  his  affection  for 
detail  was  overwhelming.  This  is  especially  clear 
in  the  personal  descriptions  of  his  characters. 
He  has  a  trick  of  enumerating  every  feature, 
colour,  shape,  and  suggestion  all  elaborately 
recorded  ;  and  the  effect  of  such  "  schedules  of 
beauty  "  ("  Item,  two  lips,  indifferent  red  ;  Item, 
two  grey  eyes  with  lids  to  them  ;  Item,  one  neck, 
one  chin,  and  so  forth  ")  is  not,  as  Olivia  very 
well  knew,  to  convey  the  true  impression  of  a 
face.  The  true  impression  is  a  general  one,  with 
some  outstanding  feature  conspicuously  marked ; 
and  Gissing's  elaborate  inventories  fail  again 
and  again  to  convey  any  real  and  abiding  picture. 
The  details  are  too  many  ;  they  simply  confuse 
the  fancy.  And  this  is  true  of  his  workmanship 
in  a  more  general  sense  as  well.  His  great  failing 
was  his  want  of  imagination,  and  of  broad  poetic 
suggestion.  He  was  instinctively  unable  to  con- 
template his  world  on  a  broad  plane  ;  and  perhaps 
the  very  bitterness  of  his  own  experience  prevented 
him  from  illuminating  it  with  any  sort  of  sustain- 
ing philosophy.  We  shall  see  this  point  more 
clearly  when  we  come  to  say  a  word  or  two  upon 
the  inner  character  of  his  work  ;  in  the  meanwhile, 
it  remains  as  a  brooding  hindrance  upon  the 
externals  of  his  art  as  well.  And  in  the  very  be- 
ginning it  militated  grievously  against  any  chance 
of  his  popularity. 

Realism,  of  course,  has  never  been  popular  in 
England.  "  That  rather  narrow-toned  organ,  the 
modern  Englishman "  (as  Arnold  loved  mis- 
chievously to  call  him),  does  not  care  to  be  told 

«74 


THE  METHODS  OF  EMILE  ZOLA 

too  much  about  the  naked  truth  of  things.  He 
likes  the  downright  character  ;  he  expects  ele- 
mentary honesty  ;  but  he  does  at  least  wish  to 
believe  that  this  dear  old  England  of  his  is  quite 
the  best  possible  country,  all  things  considered, 
in  the  best  of  all  practically  possible  worlds. 
Now,  Gissing's  grey  and  sombre  revelations  of 
the  true  surroundings  of  more  than  half  the 
population  of  the  country  told  him  just  the 
opposite  of  all  this  ;  and  naturally,  feeling  un- 
comfortable under  the  information,  he  decided 
to  leave  Gissing's  work  indulgently  alone.  It 
happened,  therefore — and  it  is  not  very  much 
to  the  credit  of  our  cosmopolitan  artistic  judgment 
that  this  should  have  been  the  case — it  happened 
that  in  France,  where  realism  is  indigenous, 
Gissing's  reputation  was  already  among  the  highest 
in  British  fiction  before  the  London  libraries 
were  at  all  disconcerted  by  any  pressing  demands 
for  his  books.  The  young  French  enthusiasts 
were  hailing  him  as  "  le  jeune  maitre,"  and 
comparing  him  with  Zola,  when  not  even  an 
illustrated  London  paper  had  found  occasion  to 
beg  him  to  be  photographed. 

Since  Gissing's  death,  this  comparison  with 
Zola  has  been  widely  repeated  ;  but  it  is  surely 
not  quite  so  felicitous  as  some  of  the  favourite 
parallelisms  of  French  literary  criticism.  Certain 
likenesses  do  undoubtedly  exist.  Both  writers 
were  avid  for  detail  ;  both  were  susceptibly 
sincere  ;  both  surrounded  their  world  with  a  sort 
of  cloud  of  honest  melancholy.  But  the  intrinsic 
methods  of  the  two — their  cardiac  relations  to 
life — were  diametrically  opposite.  With  Zola 
the  whole  concern  of  art  was  the  promulgation 

175 


GEORGE  GISSING 


of  a  thesis  ;  he  was,  surely,  the  enfant  terrible  of 
the  "  novel  with  a  purpose."  Every  one  of  his 
novels  propounds  a  theme,  and  the  characters  in 
it  are  arranged,  like  puppets  in  a  theatre,  to  illus- 
trate the  main  doctrine  of  the  story.  A  novel  by 
Zola  may  be  said  to  be  like  a  lecturer's  celestial 
globe.  It  has  raised  stars  upon  it,  representing 
the  separate  units  of  the  firmament ;  but  the 
lecturer  revolves  it  in  his  hands  to  argue  the 
movement  of  the  whole  sphere,  and  the  stars 
move  with  the  globe,  merely  as  parts  of  the  whole 
complicated  machinery  of  motion.  It  is  the  same 
with  Zola's  characters.  He  revolves  the  circling 
ball  of  his  theme,  showing  every  side  of  it  to  the 
audience,  but  the  characters  that  people  the  story 
move  only  as  component  portions  of  the  subject, 
which  dominates  the  whole  discourse  with  a  sort 
of  insistent  personality.  With  Gissing  the  very 
opposite  method  is  the  whole  secret  of  art.  He 
writes,  not  at  all  to  illustrate  a  theory,  but  simply 
to  picture  life.  With  him  the  characters  of  his 
story  are  the  entire  concern  of  the  artist.  He 
takes  his  little  groups  of  people,  follows  them 
into  their  houses,  watches  them  in  their  daily 
going  out  and  coming  in  ;  and,  like  his  own 
Philip  Lashmar,  "  takes  to  heart  all  their  human 
miseries  and  follies,  living  in  a  ceaseless  mild 
indignation  against  the  tenour  of  his  age."  It  is 
the  individual  that  interests  him,  not  the  general 
movement  ;  and  it  is  by  his  wonderfully  sympa- 
"thetic  reflections  of  individual  ambition  and  dis- 
appointment that  the  best  of  his  work  will  survive 
its  generation.  Here,  at  last,  we  reach  the  main- 
spring of  Gissing 's  art.  The  training  in  realistic 
method  which  his  own  hard  experience  afforded 

176 


THE  PAIN  OF  FINITE  HEARTS 

him,  was  all  the  while  tending  towards  the  de- 
velopment of  this  nervous  sympathy  with  suffer- 
ing which  is  the  true  antiseptic  of  his  work.  The 
strength  of  his  art  is  concentrated  here.  Whether 
he  saw  life  whole  or  not,  he  at  least  saw  it,  through 
the  medium  of  his  own  temperament,  with  amaz- 
ing steadiness.  And  all  his  stories  may  be  said  to 
be  animated  by  the  same  sentiment,  the  same 
"  ceaseless,  mild  indignation  against  the  tenour 
of  his  age." 

The  individual,  we  have  said,  is  the  one  in- 
terest of  his  art ;  but  it  is  always  the  individual 
seen  through  the  same  haze  of  temperament. 
Gissing  himself,  thrown  by  circumstances  into 
a  life  the  very  opposite  of  that  his  taste  dictated, 
moving  among  the  laborious  and  the  toil-worn, 
with  his  own  inclinations  all  set  towards  study 
and  intellectual  ease,  could  scarcely  help  seeing, 
in  all  the  world  around  him,  perpetual  evidence 
of  the  foiled  ambition  of  a  striving  and  ever  dis- 
appointed humanity.  All  his  experience  returned 
to  this  truth,  crying  with  Browning  : 

"  Just  when  I  seemed  about  to  learn  ! 

Where  is  the  thread  now  ?  Off  again  ! 
The  old  trick  !  Only  I  discern — 

Infinite  passion,  and  the  pain 
Of  finite  hearts  that  yearn." 

Two  main  complications  recur  again  and  again 
in  his  stories.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  the  cruel 
disillusionment  of  the  man  or  woman  who  is 
conscious  of  immortal  longings,  which  a  narrow 
and  uninspiring  environment  is  incapable  of 
satisfying  ;  on  the  other,  there  is  the  spectacle 
of  a  rich  and  desired  opportunity,  suddenly 
177  N 


GEORGE  GISSING 


placed  by  fate  in  the  path  of  a  character  too 
unstable  and  purposeless  to  grasp  its  own 
advantage.  In  either  case,  there  is  the  same 
result :  a  bitter  awakening,  disappointment,  and 
at  the  best  a  resignation  which  is  already  on  the 
borders  of  despair.  And  in  tracing  the  course  of 
disillusionment  the  artist  spares  us  very  little. 
In  the  threadbare  lodgings,  makeshift  homes, 
and  penurious  parsonages  to  which  he  carries 
our  imagination,  the  tale  of  domestic  irritability, 
of  the  petty  jars  of  conflicting  temperaments,  of 
the  triturating  friction  of  daily  intercourse  upon 
the  uncongenial,  is  told  with  the  very  poignancy 
of  truth.  The  touch  is  not  so  much  bitter  as 
tenderly  regretful ;  "  Oh,  the  pity  of  it !  "  he 
seems  to  say  : 

"  The  little  less,  and  what  worlds  away  !  " 

The  man  himself,  as  he  pictures  him  in  "  Rye- 
croft,"  is  here  among  his  characters,  speaking  of 
the  things  he  has  known,  with  the  vexed  courage 
of  resignation. 

"  Naturally  a  man  of  independent  and  rather 
scornful  spirit,  he  had  suffered  much  from  defeated 
ambition,  from  disillusions  of  many  kinds,  from  sub- 
jection to  grim  necessity  ;  the  result  of  it,  at  the  time 
of  which  I  am  speaking,  was,  certainly  not  a  broken 
spirit,  but  a  mind  and  temper  so  sternly  disciplined, 
that,  in  ordinary  intercourse  with  him,  one  did  not 
know  but  that  he  led  a  calm,  contented  life." 

But  the  calm  is  only  a  superficial  assumption. 
Underneath  it  is  always  surging  that  "  mild 
indignation  against  the  tenour  of  his  age,"  mild 
indeed,  but  tenderly  pathetic,  with  a  sense  of  lost 
possibilities  and  averted  hopes.  Why,  he  seems 
178 


PRISONERS  OF  THE  SOUL 


to  say,  should  this  poor,  vain  girl,  decked  out  in 
shabby  finery,  have  the  soul  of  a  melodramatic 
heroine  in  the  body  of  a  milliner's  assistant  ? 
Why  should  this  true  labourer  in  the  field  of  art 
be  forced  to  debase  his  talents  at  the  whim  of  a 
selfish  and  frivolous  wife  ;  and  at  last  to  give 
his  life  as  well  as  his  ambition  to  glut  a  still  dis- 
satisfied vanity  ?  Why  should  all  the  world  be 
full  of  the  sighing  of  the  prisoners  of  the  soul, 
who  find  no  respite  and  no  rest  in  the  perpetual 
seeking  for  the  never-found  ?  And  there  is  no 
answer  but  his  own  inquiry.  Why  ? 

And  yet,  of  course,  this  is  not  the  whole 
philosophy  of  life  ;  nor,  if  the  artist  had  seen  the 
life  around  him  through  the  medium  of  a  less 
sensitive  temperament  than  his  own,  would  he 
have  found  it  to  be  seething  only  with  sorrow 
and  doubt.  The  old  woman  on  the  farm,  who 
looked  over  the  fence  into  her  pig-sty,  and  ex- 
claimed with  benediction  :  "  Well,  I  am  sure  we 
have  all  much  to  be  thankful  for  !  God  A'mighty 
might  a*  made  us  all  pigs  !  " — this  simple  philo- 
sopher of  the  backyard  was,  after  all,  viewing 
the  situation  entirely  from  her  own  point  of  view, 
and  not  at  all  from  the  pigs'.  They,  no  doubt — 
good,  easy  bodies — were  well -contented  with 
their  ditch,  and  would  have  thought  the  bustling, 
rattling  life  of  the  kitchen  and  the  dairy  the  very 
depth  of  irritating  discomfort.  Life,  after  all,  has 
always  its  double  aspect ;  not  every  one  has  his 
hidden  ideals.  Those  who  move  amid  middle- 
class  English  life  will  readily  admit  that  in  many 
of  the  uniform  and  unideal  villas  of  a  London 
suburb  there  is  one  member  of  the  family  (gener- 
ally a  girl)  who  has  ambitions  above  her  station, 
179 


GEORGE  GISSING 


and  a  capacity  for  idealism  which  cannot  be 
satisfied  with  third-rate  dances  and  mild  flirta- 
tions in  the  lecture-room.  But  for  every  one  such 
imprisoned  spirit,  "  beating  in  the  void  its  lumin- 
ous wings  in  vain,"  there  will  be  a  dozen  plump, 
contented  persons,  whom  the  certainty  of 
roast  beef  on  Sunday,  and  the  possible  excitement 
of  a  smile  from  the  curate,  will  abundantly  satisfy 
from  week's  end  to  week's  end.  And,  if  we  go  a 
little  lower  down  in  the  scale,  we  know  that  those 
kindly  philanthropists  who  establish  pleasant 
and  well-ordered  "  Homes  "  for  the  children  of 
the  East  End  tell  us  continually  that  the  life  of 
the  streets  is  so  fascinating  and  of  such  rare 
enchantment  to  its  own  sons  and  daughters,  that 
most  of  them,  after  trying  the  creature  comforts 
of  the  refuge  for  a  little  while,  yearn  to  go  back 
to  the  old  garish  lights,  and  break  loose  at  last  to 
take  up  again  the  precarious,  exciting  odyssey 
of  the  street  arab.  This  side  of  the  question  George 
Gissing  could  not  see,  because,  realist  as  he  was 
in  the  practice  of  art,  he  was  at  heart  an  idealist 
of  idealists  ;  so  truly  so,  indeed,  that  he  presents 
but  one  more  example  of  that  singular  paradox 
of  the  artistic  life,  which  is  for  ever  setting  the 
artist,  conscientiously  and  with  every  access  of 
sincerity,  upon  the  very  opposite  path  to  that  to 
which  his  inclination  would  naturally  seem  to 
lead  him.  But  the  paths  join  at  last.  For  only  one 
who  had  a  sense  of  the  meaning  of  things  beyond 
their  common  implication  could  draw  them  as 
they  are.  Some  "  wandering  air  of  the  unsaid  " 
must  traverse  even  the  most  definite  and  actual 
of  human  sayings. 

In  that  exquisite  volume  of  travel,  "  By  the 
1 80 


SUNSET  BY  THE  IONIAN  SEA 

Ionian  Sea,"  we  seem  to  feel  the  genius  of  its 
author  stretching  out  hands  towards  the  further 
shore,  and  gradually  assuming  that  mantle  of 
romance  with  which  his  last  imaginative  piece 
of  work  was  found  to  be  altogether  clothed. 
In  the  last  days  of  his  life  George  Gissing 
was  permitted  to  taste  some  of  that  restfulness 
and  ease  for  which  he  had  all  his  days  longed  so 
tenderly  ;  and  the  reflection  of  this  gentle  sunset- 
glow  had  begun  to  colour  his  later  work.  Suppose 
the  days  of  comfort  had  been  prolonged,  would 
they  have  turned  his  genius  to  new  uses,  teaching 
him  some  of  that  easier  confidence  which  the 
days  of  tribulation  (and  they  were  many)  had 
silenced  in  a  sort  of  dumb  despair  ?  Who  can 
say  ?  But,  standing  with  him  by  the  waters  that 
he  loved,  we  seem  to  hear  an  unfamiliar  echo  in 
his  voice,  an  echo  that  sounds  like  a  farewell  to 
the  streets  and  alleys  he  had  traversed  for  so 
long. 

"  '  So  hard  a  thing,'  he  says,  '  to  catch  and  to  re- 
tain, the  mood  corresponding  perfectly  to  an  intellec- 
tual bias — hard,  at  all  events,  for  him  who  cannot 
shape  his  life  as  he  will,  and  whom  circumstance  ever 
menaces  with  dreary  harassment.  Alone  and  quiet, 
I  heard  the  washing  of  the  waves  ;  I  saw  the  evening 
fall  on  cloud-wreathed  Etna,  the  twinkling  lights 
came  forth  upon  Scylla  and  Charybdis  ;  and,  as  I 
looked  my  last  towards  the  Ionian  Sea,  I  wished  it 
were  mine  to  wander  endlessly  amid  the  silence  of 
the  ancient  world, to-day  and  all  its  sounds  forgotten.'" 

To-day  and  all  its  sounds  forgotten  !  It  is  the 
pathos  of  so  much  of  the  artistic  life  that  these 
importunate  sounds  can  never  be  forgotten,  that 
they  ring  in  the  ears  of  the  artist  till  the  very 


GEORGE  GISSING 


melody  of  the  Muses'  Hill  is  drowned  in  the 
thundering  echoes  of  the  Strand.  To-day  and  all 
its  sounds  made  up  the  medley  of  George  Gissing's 
life,  and  roll,  like  a  grumbling  undercurrent, 
beneath  the  surface  of  all  his  work.  The  one 
thing  wanting  in  that  work,  indeed — wanting 
not  only  to  its  popularity  but  also  to  its  artistic 
perfection — was  just  an  hour's  respite  from  the 
insistent  voices  of  the  street,  just  a  day's  holiday, 
shall  we  say  ?  among  the  shepherds  upon  the 
Delectable  Mountains.  And  the  final  note  of 
pathos  in  his  story  is  simply  the  suggestion  that 
the  hour  of  respite  had  arrived,  and  that  the  House 
Beautiful  itself  was  in  sight,  at  the  very  moment 
when  the  rest  that  comes  unsought  wrote  its  cold, 
inevitable  "  Finis  "  across  his  life  and  work.  The 
hour  of  his  death  seems  to  fall  in  cruel  keeping 
with  the  hours  of  his  life.  The  ambition  was  still 
unsatisfied  ;  the  last  word  was  yet  to  say. 


182 


GEORGE  BIRKBECK  HILL 

IN  one  of  his  casual  letters,  thrown  off  with- 
out self  -  consciousness  or  premeditation, 
George  Birkbeck  Hill  has  a  sentence  which 
sums  up  the  chief  enthusiasm  of  his  life :  "  Bless- 
ings," he  says,  "  on  those  who  publish  letters  and 
biographies ;  but  a  ten-fold  blessing  on  the 
writers  of  autobiographies."  It  is  a  sentiment 
which  many  will  echo,  but  it  is  much  more  than 
that :  it  contains  a  clear  revelation  of  the  life- 
interest  of  the  man  who  uttered  it.  For  Dr. 
Birkbeck  Hill's  best  years  were  given  to  the  study 
of  biography  ;  he  became  absorbed  in  the  in- 
terests of  other  men's  lives  ;  and,  as  so  often 
happens  with  the  man  who  lives  in  the  company 
of  the  illustrious  dead,  he  was  able  to  draw  from 
the  experiences  and  the  sympathies  of  the  past  a 
perpetual  stream  of  example  and  of  consolation 
in  the  present.  And,  since  the  only  life  that  is 
really  worth  reading  about  is  the  life  that  is 
governed  by  ideas,  the  result  of  his  whole-hearted 
concentration  was  to  make  his  own  "  Life " 
peculiarly  interesting  to  all  those  who,  like  him- 
self, find  the  biographies  of  the  true  men  of  history 
far  more  stimulating  than  the  adventures  of  the 
false  men  of  fiction.  Such  a  story  may  be  singu- 
larly free  from  incident  or  excitement,  but  it  is 
absolutely  quivering  with  human  interest  and 
sympathy. 

The  only  life  worth  reading  about,  we  have 
said,  is  the  life  that  is  governed  by  ideas.  This  is 
a  truism,  on  the  face  of  it,  and  yet  a  great  many 

183 


GEORGE  BIRKBECK  HILL 


people  fail  to  appreciate  its  truth.  The  majority, 
we  rather  suspect,  would  be  ready  to  estimate  the 
interest  of  a  career  by  the  variety  of  its  changes  and 
chances,  taking  it  for  granted  that  a  man  whose 
life  was  in  his  hand  every  day  was,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  a  more  attractive  figure  than  one  whose 
conversation  was  concerned,  not  with  the  bugle 
and  the  sabre,  but  remained  rooted  in  those 
spiritual  interests  which  make  their  appeal  only 
to  the  eye  of  the  soul.  But  never  could  the  majority 
be  more  wrong.  The  breathless  adventure,  once 
recounted,  has  no  further  charm  ;  it  flames  and 
glows  a  moment  in  the  surrounding  grey,  and 
then  fades  out  and  is  forgotten.  But  an  idea  is  a 
permanent  thing  :  it  is  the  same  yesterday  and 
to-day  and  for  ever  ;  and,  however  often  we  look 
at  it,  we  shall  always  find  some  new  beauty  in  it, 
and  some  hitherto  unrealised  suggestion.  And 
what  is  true  of  an  idea  in  itself  is  truer  still  of  the 
life  that  is  led  by  ideas.  As  our  experience  deepens, 
we  begin  to  see  that  such  lives  as  these  are  alone 
the  influences  that  make  history  and  mould 
character.  They  have  the  secret  of  the  ages  ;  they 
"  never  grow  old,  nor  change,  nor  pass  away." 

The  life  of  George  Birkbeck  Hill  was  about  as 
simple  and  direct  as  any  life  lived  in  our  tangled, 
restless  generation  could  possibly  be  ;  he  saw 
his  way  before  him  early,  and  never  turned  aside 
from  it.  He  was  born  into  a  scholastic  family  ; 
became  familiar  with  books  from  his  nursery 
days  ;  and  lived  among  books  for  nearly  seventy 
years.  The  interests  which  surrounded  him  were 
subject  to  few  vicissitudes.  Even  before  he  went 
to  Oxford  he  had  become  attached  to  the  gentle 
and  beautiful  girl  who  was  afterwards  his  wife  ; 
184 


THE  QUIET  LIFE  OF  IDEAS 

their  happy  married  life  ended  in  her  death  only 
a  few  months  before  his  own  ;  they  were  enabled 
to  share,  in  perfect  communion,  all  the  simple 
troubles  and  consolations  of  a  bright,  united  home. 
He  had  to  work  hard  all  his  days,  and  his 
labours  brought  him  comparatively  small  material 
recompense  ;  yet  he  was  never  harassed  by  diffi- 
culties nor  subjected  to  the  more  bitter  privations 
of  the  literary  career.  He  lived,  too,  to  see  his 
life's  work  finished,  his  great  edition  of  Johnson 
complete  upon  the  shelves.  He  had  nothing,  in 
short,  to  look  back  upon  with  regret.  Is  it  possible 
to  conceive  a  simpler  life,  or  one  which  at  first 
sight,  makes  less  appeal  to  the  imagination  ? 
And  yet  its  record  is  full  of  interest,  of  charm, 
and  of  memorable  examples.  And  the  whole 
secret  is  that  the  life  is  permeated  with  ideas,  and 
illuminated  to  the  last  by  the  high,  unchanging 
lights  of  intellect. 

What  strikes  one,  first  and  last,  in  reading 
George  Birkbeck  Hill's  letters  is  their  wonderful 
simplicity.  At  Oxford,  where  he  had  to  lead 
austerer  and  more  laborious  days  than  most  of 
us,  he  writes  to  his  future  wife,  without  a  touch 
of  pose  or  pedantry,  a  record  of  the  simplest  toils 
and  pleasures.  He  met  there  some  of  the  most 
brilliant  men  of  their  time — William  Morris, 
Burne  Jones,  Swinburne,  T.  H.  Green,  James 
Bryce,  and  Caird — he  became  their  friend  and 
fellow  club-man  ;  but  there  is  not  a  word  in  his 
letters  to  suggest  that  the  little  company  took 
itself  seriously  : 

"  Yesterday  I  had  Nichol  to  breakfast  with  me  in 
honour  of  some  fowls  aunt  had  had  slaughtered 
expressly  for  me,  and  Price  took  a  cup  of  tea  with  me 

185 


GEORGE  BIRKBECK  HILL 


and  tried  some  of  my  home  jam.  Later  on  I  went  to 
call  upon  a  Freshman,  remembering  my  loneliness 
when  I  first  came  up,  and  very  well  pleased  he  ap- 
peared to  see  me,  as  he  knew  no  one." 

Nothing  could  be  more  natural  and  unaffected, 
and  this  simplicity  was  of  the  very  essence  of 
his  being.  It  crops  up  everywhere  ;  when  he  is 
over  fifty,  and  crowned  with  distinction,  he  seems 
quite  surprised  that  anyone  should  be  interested 
in  himself  or  his  work.  If  he  meets  another 
writer  and  is  greeted  with  cordiality,  he  records 
it  with  surprise  and  gratitude.  His  gentle,  retiring 
nature  is  pleased  by  the  compliment,  but  quite 
impregnable  to  flattery  or  even  praise. 

This,  it  need  scarcely  be  said,  is  the  attitude 
of  a  man  who  takes  himself  at  a  low  valuation, 
not  out  of  false  modesty,  but  from  his  own 
knowledge  of  the  things  he  does  not  know.  The 
small-minded  man,  having  achieved  one  little 
thing  well,  puffs  himself  out  into  a  semblance 
of  greatness.  The  large-minded  man,  who  may 
have  done  many  things  excellently,  looks  round 
upon  the  immeasurable  work  of  the  world  and 
realises  the  poverty  of  his  own  share  in  it.  He 
lives,  in  short,  by  ideas,  and  ideas  save  him  from 
conceit.  And  nowhere  do  we  find  the  force  and 
value  of  the  intellectual  life  more  clearly  shown 
than  in  Birkbeck  Hill's  attitude  to  the  ineradicable 
sorrow  of  his  life — the  death  of  his  little  son, 
Walter. 

In  the  midst  of  his  promise  the  child  was  struck 
down,  and  the  father  could  find  no  consolation 
in  the  common,  human  hope.  "  Now,"  he  said, 
"  I  have  to  face  life  without  him."  It  is  the  first 
and  last  word  of  resignation  : 
1 86 


THE  TRUE  HUMILITY 


"  How  often,  as  I  sit  by  the  fireside,  does  my  eye 
sadly  rest  on  the  part  of  the  floor — how  well  I  re- 
member it — where  he  quivered  and  danced  with  joy 
as  he  welcomed  me  home  one  winter  evening,  and 
clinging  to  me  said  in  his  loving  voice  and  with  his 
caressing  ways  : 

And  will  I  see  him  once  again, 

And  will  I  hear  him  speak  ? 
I'm  downright  dizzy  at  the  thought, 

In  truth  I'm  like  to  greet. 

If  only  he  shall  see  me  again,  and  stands  on  the 
other  shore  of  the  dark  water  to  welcome  me  !  I  then 
shall  be  the  child  and  he  the  guide — old  in  the  ways 
of  heaven.  But  it  is  a  dream." 

The  strength  of  a  man's  character  is  proved 
in  the  moment  of  its  ordeal ;  many  a  man  passes 
for  strong  half  the  days  of  his  life,  only  to  show 
his  fatal  and  irretrievable  weakness  in  the  hour 
of  trial.  The  gentle,  recluse-like  air  of  Birkbeck 
Hill  might  not  have  suggested  to  the  casual 
comer  the  strength  and  fortitude  that  lay  below 
it ;  but  here  they  are  revealed  in  all  their  en- 
nobling quality.  "  I  will  never  try  to  comfort 
myself  with  what  is  false,"  he  said  ;  and  then 
turned  his  eyes  to  the  sunlight.  It  takes  true 
character  to  do  that,  unsustained  by  faith  and 
expectation. 

But  here  is  the  prevailing  secret  of  this  quiet, 
self-contained,  and  stimulating  life.  It  lived,  not 
by  faith,  nor  by  sight,  but  by  the  light  of  the 
living  idea.  To  make  literature  serve  life  ;  to 
lighten  the  burden  of  existence  by  reflection 
upon  the  infinite  suffering  of  the  world  ;  to  regard 
oneself,  in  all  humility,  as  less  than  the  mote 
that  flickers  in  the  sunlight  of  eternity  ;  and, 

187 


GEORGE  BIRKBECK  HILL 


out  of  that  sense  of  insignificance,  to  gather — 
not  despair,  but  the  larger  and  austerer  hope  : 
that  is  the  lesson  of  such  a  life  as  this.  And  the 
consolations  of  such  a  hope  have  been  found  to 
endure. 

"  Thank  God  !  that,  while  the  nerves  decay 
And  muscles  desiccate  away, 
The  brain's  the  hardiest  part  of  men, 
And  thrives  till  three-score  years  and  ten." 

If  only  a  man  can  feel  that  truth,  and  can  work 
in  the  light  of  it  all  his  days,  he  need  never  know 
old  age  ;  and  death  itself  may  come  as  a  friend 
in  the  morning. 


188 


TWO  HOMES 


THE  CITY  OF  BATH 

WHEN  first  I  knew  Bath — and  it  was 
the  first  town  I  ever  saw  with  eyes 
hitherto  accustomed  only  to  country 
lanes — there  was  no  railway  to  reach  it  from  our 
own  spur  of  the  Mendips,  and  you  drove  across 
the  coal-fields  of  Radstock,  by  the  long  high  road 
through  White  Post,  up  and  down  the  rough 
places  of  Dunkerton  Hill,  with  its  lonely  clump 
of  dark  trees  upon  the  summit ;  and  then,  a 
few  miles  further  on,  the  hillside  city  broke  upon 
your  gaze,  climbing  up  the  side  of  what  we  used 
to  be  told  was  the  crater  of  a  dead  volcano,  tier 
above  tier  of  crescents,  and  trees  and  spires.  Is 
it  only  the  tenderness  of  association,  I  wonder, 
that  makes  me  believe  that  there  is  no  city  in 
England  so  thoroughly  at  one  with  itself  in  the 
spectacle  it  presents  to  the  traveller's  eye,  so 
entirely  and  harmoniously  a  piece  of  definite 
architectural  workmanship  ?  Other  tastes  may 
acclaim  other  preferences,  but  for  my  part,  my 
loyalty  is  unshaken. 

Bath  was  indeed  happy  in  the  moment  of  its 
re-creation  ;  the  city,  as  we  know  it,  grew  up 
within  a  single  century,  at  the  will  of  a  little  com- 
pany of  master  builders,  fertile  in  taste  and  fancy. 
Everyone  knows  the  old  legend  of  Prince  Bladud 
and  the  husks  of  the  prodigal,  of  the  swine  that 
were  healed  in  the  mud  baths,  and  of  the  Roman 
city,  "  Aquae  Solis  " — waters  of  the  sun — that 
grew  up  with  this  discovery  of  those  mysterious 
powers.  And  the  first  known  map  of  Bath  which 
191 


THE  CITY  OF  BATH 


issued  from  the  Heralds'  College  in  the  second 
half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  shows  her  then  a 
fortified  city  of  small  dimensions,  compact  within 
her  four  gates,  with  the  Avon  to  the  south  and  east. 

But  this  was  not  the  city  that  we  see  to-day — 
far  from  it.  Hard  times  settled  upon  the  town 
during  the  Civil  Wars,  the  baths  themselves 
lost  their  repute,  and  for  more  than  a  hundred 
years  scarcely  a  house  was  added  to  the  map. 
And  then,  with  the  Restoration,  there  came 
changes.  Charles  II.  and  his  Queen  patronised 
the  place  ;  the  Court  began  to  talk  about  the 
excellence  of  the  waters  ;  and  when,  forty  years 
later,  Queen  Anne  paid  a  state  visit  to  "  the  Bath," 
the  turning-point  in  the  fortunes  of  the  town  were 
reached.  There  was  at  once  a  great  influx  of 
fashionable  life  ;  the  outlying  villages  of  Weston 
and  Twerton  had  to  eke  out  the  insufficient 
accommodation  of  the  city  itself ;  beds  were  a 
guinea  a  night,  and  the  builders  began  to  think 
that  it  was  high  time  to  be  busy. 

Then  at  last  the  city  of  Bath  began  to  rise, 
climbing  the  terraced  hill  towards  Lansdown, 
and  using  every  shelving  ridge  to  wonderful 
advantage.  Crescent  rose  above  Crescent,  and 
Place  above  Place  ;  on  the  lower  levels  Queen 
Square  and  the  Circus  maintained  a  sort  of 
courtly  dignity  ;  on  the  higher  ground  there  was 
no  room  for  wide  display,  and  the  precipitous 
street  was  flanked  by  rows  of  stately  houses  that 
took,  with  a  natural  sense  of  propriety,  the  shape 
of  the  hill  they  came  to  clothe.  There  was  no 
haste  or  economy  in  the  building  ;  the  houses 
were  not  only  sound  in  fabric,  but  rich  in  decor- 
ation ;  the  frontals  finely  wrought  with  pillars 
192 


GREY  EYES  OF  STONE 


and  garlands,  the  staircases  wide  and  sunny,  the 
ceilings  beautifully  adorned,  the  fireplaces  tall 
and  graceful ;  the  whole  city  a  place  well  suited 
to  the  fashionable  life  that  was  now  to  flood  it 
with  vivacity  from  Sydney  Gardens  to  King's 
Mead,  and  from  the  Avon  to  Charlcombe  Woods. 

Is  it  sentimentality  to  feel  that  what  is  left  of 
Bath  to-day  presents  to  the  fond  imagination  little 
more  than  a  grey  and  beautiful  wraith  of  that  city 
of  wit  and  entertainment  ?  The  good  Bathonian 
of  the  present  day  will  indignantly  deny  the  im- 
plication, protesting  that  the  place  is  putting  on 
its  festal  garb  again,  with  dances  in  the  spring- 
time and  a  master  «f  ceremonies  all  the  year 
round — that  the  Queen  of  the  West  still  knows 
how  to  reign  among  her  apple  orchards  and  her 
broken  hills.  It  may  be  so;  but  to  others  the 
dances  of  to-day  seem  like  a  shadow  pantomime, 
movement  without  colour,  reflection  without  the 
heart  of  life.  The  streets  of  Bath,  as  one  traverses 
them  at  midday  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century,  with  their  invalids  in  bath  chairs  and 
their  retired  officers  shuffling  off  to  play  bridge 
all  the  sunny  afternoon  in  the  club  smoking-room, 
seem  full  of  ghosts — the  ghosts  of  Beau  Nash 
and  his  merry  men,  who  gaze  upon  the  pageant 
with  weary  eyes,  wondering  if  this  indeed  is  the 
city  of  their  merry  prime.  The  old  spirit  has 
passed  from  Bath  ;  the  old  days  are  done  ;  what 
is  left  is  a  mere  shadow  of  fantastic  imagination. 

But  the  city  herself  is  there — a  city  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  bland  and  beautiful,  dreaming 
with  her  grey  stone  eyes  of  the  glories  of  an 
unforgettable  past.  Many  of  her  mansions  have 
known  what  it  is  to  have  shop  fronts  driven  into 
193  o 


THE  CITY  OF  BATH 


their  carved  facades  ;  some  of  her  chapels  have 
changed  into  badminton  courts  and  offices,  and 
Beau  Nash's  private  house  is  now  a  public  theatre. 
But  many  more  of  the  old  buildings  remain  re- 
freshingly unspoiled  ;  the  link  extinguishers  still 
survive  amid  the  fine  wrought-iron  work  ;  the 
interiors,  with  their  lofty,  garlanded  ceilings  and 
noble  doors,  are  still  unsacrificed  to  vandalism. 
Indoors  and  out  the  city  keeps  its  old-world  face 
for  those  who  have  time  to  linger  and  to  look  for 
it,  and  nowhere  more  than  in  the  long  Assembly 
Rooms,  where  the  towering  chandeliers  glitter 
with  suggestion  of  ancient  lights,  and  the  floor 
still  shines  from  the  polishing  feet  of  the  beaux 
and  belles  of  a  gayer  generation. 

What  a  world  one  can  call  up,  standing  in  the 
shadowy  vestibule,  and  looking  down  the  dim  and 
empty  hall;  what  life  and  spirit  of 

"  The  old  Augustan  days 
Of  formal  Courtesies  and  formal  Phrase, 
The  Ruffle's  Flutter  and  the  Flash  of  Steel." 

Here  Mrs.  Malaprop  grows  garrulous  over  her 
cards  ;  there  Lydia  Languish's  eyelashes  lift  in 
answer  to  some  quick  retort ;  and  surely  that  is 
Captain  Absolute  by  the  door,  fresh  and  irre- 
sponsible as  ever.  Shadows  of  the  past,  flitting  but 
imperishable  !  All  memories  of  my  native  city 
are  inextricably  interwoven  with  your  genial 
influence.  You  knew  the  city  at  her  best,  and, 
when  we  think  of  her  then,  we  think  of  you  as 
the  brightest  of  her  children.  And,  even  though 
you  are  only  creatures  of  the  imagination,  is  not 
the  world  of  the  imagination  the  truest  of  all  the 
worlds,  after  all  ? 

194 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  SOMERSET 

And  then  the  legends  of  the  countryside  !  What 
county  in  the  land  can  match  them  ?  It  is  here, 
perhaps,  that  one  is  apt  to  find  the  work  of  the 
historian  a  little  distracting  ;  it  leaves  you  too 
few  illusions.  Old  stories  grow  up  around  the 
country  lanes,  and  are  repeated  from  nurse  to 
children  ;  they  become  part  of  the  heritage  of 
the  native  ;  one  likes  them  left  unrifled  by  dis- 
covery. But  when  historical  research  comes  along, 
it  rules  out  the  old  map  into  squares,  and  sweeps 
away  the  landmarks  of  fancy.  It  serves,  of  course, 
the  sacred  cause  of  accuracy  ;  but  as  one  roams 
from  Wells  to  Athelney,  who  wants  to  be  too 
accurate  ?  Not  I,  at  any  rate  ;  I  love  to  fill  my 
imagination,  and  the  imaginations  of  my  boys 
who  will  follow  me  on  the  old  trails,  with  all  the 
sweet,  impossible  lore  of  the  countryside.  For  us 
Joseph  of  Arimathea  shall  return  perpetually  to 
the  abbey  by  the  marsh,  with  the  Holy  Grail  and 
the  sacred  thorn  in  charge  ;  for  us  the  grave  of 
Arthur  shall  remain  a  place  of  pious  pilgrimage, 
so  long  as  the  feet  will  carry  us  and  the  eyes  lift 
themselves  up  to  the  Mendip  Hills.  "  Hie  jacet 
sepultus  inclytus  rex  Arturus  in  insula  Avalonia," 
and  here  we  will  still  reverence  his  legend  without 
questioning  too  carefully  whether  Queen's  Camel 
were  really  Camelot. 

And  there  are  other  stories,  too,  probably 
entirely  built  of  fancy.  When  I  was  a  little  boy, 
I  was  told  how  all  the  valley  round  Shapwick 
was  once  the  summer  sea,  and  how  the  waters 
came  up  right  to  the  foot  of  Glastonbury  Abbey. 
And  the  story  further  ran  that  here  it  was  that 
the  dusky  barge  came  up,  "  Dark  as  a  funeral 
scarf  from  stem  to  stern,"  and  carried  Arthur, 

195 


THE  CITY  OF  BATH 


with  his  three  Queens,  into  the  confines  of  the 
spiritual  city.  And,  further,  I  was  assured  that 
Sir  Bedivere  climbed  the  face  of  Glastonbury 
Tor  itself,  to  see  the  last  of  the  spectral  vessel, 
"  straining  his  eyes  beneath  an  arch  of  hand," 
until  the  vision  was  lost  in  the  light.  The  story 
is,  of  course,  all  apocryphal ;  doubtless  it  is 
demonstrably  false.  Yet  for  one  believer  no  later 
knowledge  can  sweep  away  the  childish  impres- 
sion; and  I  shall  never  see  Glastonbury  Tor  lifting 
above  the  sunlight  and  shadow  without  a  thought 
of  Bedivere  and  Arthur  ;  and  of  the  eventual 
passage  awaiting  every  soul — "  From  the  great 
deep  to  the  great  deep  he  goes." 

And  is  not  this  typical  of  so  much  of  the  early 
associations  of  childhood,  the  secret  of  those 
"  first  affections,  those  shadowy  recollections," 
which,  however  deeply  the  plough  of  anxious 
years  may  drive  the  furrow  through  our  hearts, 

"  Are  yet  the  fountain-light  of  all  our  day, 
Are  yet  a  master-light  of  all  our  seeing  ; 
Uphold  us,  cherish,  and  have  power  to  make 
Our  noisy  years  seem  moments  in  the  being 
Of  the  eternal  Silence." 

These,  after  all,  are  the  real  things  of  life  ;  not 
the  counting-house,  the  printing-press,  the  pen 
and  ink  and  paper  of  a  grinding  Duty  ;  but  the 
imaginings  with  which  we  set  out  upon  the  day's 
journey  ;  the  light  that  never  was  except  in 
dreamland  ;  the  voices  that  never  spoke  but  to 
the  ear  of  the  soul.  And  is  not  this  the  reason 
that  the  old  homeward  way  always  finds  every 
one  of  us  a  child  again  ?  What  is  it  but  this  long- 
ing to  revive  the  heart  of  childhood  that  leads 
our  feet  so  often  to  the  old,  familiar  hills  ? 
196 


THE  LIGHTS  OF  HOME 


"  Hame,  hame,  hame,  O  hame  fain  would  I  be — 
O  hame,  hame,  hame,  to  my  ain  countree  !  " 

It  is  not  only,  of  course,  that  the  trees  are 
greener,  and  the  winding  roads  whiter  among 
the  fields  of  home.  The  Roman  colonist,  when 
he  left  his  father's  house,  used  to  take  with  him 
some  of  the  glowing  coals  from  the  hearth,  and 
set  them  down  alight  on  the  new  hearthstone  in 
the  new  home.  It  was  a  beautiful  idea,  and  all  of 
us  would  choose  to  do  the  same  ;  but  it  does  not 
conclude  the  whole  matter.  Some  of  the  home- 
spirit  may  travel  with  us  across  the  sea,  but  the 
better  part  of  it  remains  inseparable  from  its 
birth-place.  It  was  here  that  we  were  young  ; 
here  that  we  first  hoped  ;  here  that  we  first 
loved.  And  when  youth,  and  hope,  and  love  are 
all  at  an  end,  it  is  here  that  we  would  choose  to 
rest,  returning,  like  the  hunted  stag,  to  the  spot 
where  we  were  roused,  and  losing  all  remembrance 
in  the  land  which  memory  has  always  kept  un- 
spoiled and  unspotted  from  the  world. 


197 


AN  ENGLISHMAN'S  CASTLE 

THOSE  readers,  whose   "  classical  educa- 
tion "    began    any    time    between    fifty 
and  thirty  years   ago,   will  not   need   to 
be  reminded  of  a  certain  green  Latin  exercise- 
book  which  started  business  with  the  pregnant 
sentence,  "  Balbus  murum  aedificabat " — "  Balbus 
was  building  a  wall." 

So  far  as  my  own  recollection  serves,  this 
sentence  marked  the  first  turning-point  at  which 
Latin  grammar  emerged  out  of  a  chaos  of  tech- 
nicalties  into  the  borders  of  common-sense. 
History  began,  for  the  grammarian,  when  Balbus 
was  building  a  wall.  The  matter  was  of  little 
interest  in  those  days,  when  the  correct  termin- 
ations of  the  imperfect  tense  and  of  the  accusative 
case  were  the  whole  concern  of  boyhood  ;  but 
in  the  years  which  have  passed  since  then — the 
years  which  are  supposed  to  have  brought  the 
philosophic  mind — I  have  often  wondered  if  that 
grammarian  was  not  worthy  of  as  high  a  funeral 
as  Browning's,  in  that  his  wisdom  saw  into  the 
very  heart  of  things,  and  began  his  dry  record 
with  the  primitive  fact. 

"  Balbus  was  building  a  wall  " — is  it  not  the 
first  duty  of  man  ?  To  dig,  to  build,  to  hunt : 
that  is  to  say,  to  provide  a  home  and  then  to 
provision  it.  The  primitive  life  of  man,  the 
natural  life,  makes  no  further  demand  upon  the 
head  of  the  family.  To-day  we  have  complicated 
these  healthy  duties  by  a  cloud  of  elaborations. 
We  begin  our  day's  work  by  rushing  along  mean 
little,  huddled  thoroughfares  ;  we  project  our 


BALBUS  WAS  BUILDING  A  WALL 

panting  bodies  into  iron  cages  by  which  we  are 
lowered  into  the  bowels  of  the  earth  ;  we  are 
whirled  for  half  an  hour  through  an  iron  tube  ; 
again  we  are  sent  spinning  upward  in  a  cage. 
We  emerge  between  high  walls  without  a  yard 
of  sky  above  us,  and  toil  at  a  dusty  desk  with  a 
flaring  light  in  our  eyes  till  the  patch  of  grey  sky 
above  us  has  become  black  ;  then  the  process 
begins  again,  and  lands  us  back  in  our  mean  little 
streets,  in  time  to  go  wearily  to  bed,  in  the  hope 
of  finding  spirit  enough  in  a  night's  rest  to  start 
us  out  on  the  same  career  next  morning. 

Well,  it  is  not  a  cheerful  picture  ;  and  it  is 
scarcely  a  wonder  that  the  mind  of  the  idealist 
should  have  been  at  work  to  better  it.  An  English- 
man's home,  says  the  old  adage,  is  his  castle. 
Our  favourite  national  ballad  reminds  us  that 
humility  is  no  bar  to  the  delights  of  home,  sweet 
home.  Yet,  when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  what 
melancholy  little  hovels  so  many  of  us  town- 
faring  toilers  labour  all  our  life  to  keep  above 
our  heads,  paying  other  owners  extortionate 
interest  for  the  right  of  occupying  their  incon- 
venient property  !  Balbus  knew  a  better  way  than 
that.  "  Balbus  was  building  a  wall." 

I  would  ask  the  reader,  then,  to  follow  me  in 
imagination  into  a  happier  land.  When  he  has 
reached  its  borders,  he  will  forget  the  tedium 
of  these  dull,  pedestrian  phrases,  in  gratitude  for 
the  sunlight  and  waving  trees,  the  trim  gardens 
and  the  clean,  white  cottage  homes  to  which  it 
will  introduce  him.  A  home  !  one's  own  home  ! 
There  can  still  lie  immortal  music  in  that  word. 
A  little  while  ago,  I,  too,  followed  the  law  of 
Balbus,  and  I  write  this  crabbed  manuscript 
199 


AN  ENGLISHMAN'S  CASTLE 

from  between  the  walls  which  I  have  built.  There 
is  a  familiar  wisdom  which  says  that  fools  build 
houses,  and  wise  men  live  in  them ;  but  I  prefer 
to  believe  that,  if  he  chooses  the  right  spot,  the 
wise  man  lives  in  the  house  which  he  himself 
has  built.  After  all,  the  house  which  you  have 
yourself  watched  grow,  for  which  you  yourself 
imagined  this  little  oriel  or  extended  this  cosy 
ingle-nook,  must,  in  the  nature  of  things,  mean 
so  much  more  to  the  fancy  than  the  ready-made 
article  which  has  never  shown  you  its  soul.  As 
the  home  rises,  brick  upon  brick,  from  its  broad 
and  concrete  trenches  to  its  comely  rough-cast 
chimney-stacks,  every  stick  and  stone  of  it  has 
its  own  association.  You  even  remember  upon 
what  day,  and  under  what  complexion  of  sky, 
each  pleasant  finishing  touch  was  given.  Here  is 
the  real  sense  of  possession.  However  small  the 
tenement,  it  is  at  least  all  yours. 

And  this  happy  feeling  is  now  within  every 
man's  reach.  I  look  out  of  my  window  as  I  write, 
across  the  tulips  and  the  wall-flowers ;  and  away 
to  the  north-west,  steadily  spreading  in  my  direc- 
tion, I  see  the  fresh  white  walls  and  red  roofs  of 
the  Hampstead  Garden  Suburb — surely  a  land 
of  promise  undreamt  of  by  the  Balbus  of  half  a 
century  ago.  It  is  growing  nearer  to  me  every 
month.  The  days  will  not  be  long,  I  fear,  before 
the  meadow  set  with  willows,  behind  my  little 
garden,  will  hear  the  sound  of  the  bricklayers' 
trowel.  Yet  how  can  I  grudge  the  Garden  Suburb 
its  steady  growth,  since  I  have  myself  watched 
every  new  house  in  it  from  foundation  to  roof-tree, 
and  walked  its  ways  of  pleasantness  from  spring 
to  mid- winter  ?  I  wonder  how  many  of  the  great 

200 


THE  CHARM  OF  HAMPSTEAD 

labouring  body  of  Londoners — the  black-coated 
clerks  and  pale-faced  artisans — have  any  idea 
of  the  charming  homes  which  they  can  now  make 
for  themselves,  among  our  green  fields  and  may- 
trees,  within  twenty  minutes  of  their  daily  work  ! 
Well,  they  have  only  to  come  out  from  their 
wilderness  to  see. 

"  It  is  the  morning  of  the  May, 
And  the  spring  comes  slowly  up  this  way." 

Standing  by  Asmuns  Hill,  and  looking  down 
upon  the  well-planned  winding  road,  one  sees 
broad  ways,  flanked  with  grass,  trim  gardens 
with  old  trees  carefully  preserved  at  every  corner, 
high-backed  seats  in  the  porches,  overhung  with 
roses,  where  the  tired  worker  may  rest  with  the 
day's  work  done,  and  open  spaces  for  the  children 
to  play  in,  on  every  side.  The  gardens  are  marked 
off  with  neat  white  posts  and  chains,  and  every 
garden  is  alive  with  flowers,  while  over  all  hangs 
a  broad  expanse  of  blue  sky,  bringing  sunlight 
and  health  into  every  corner  of  the  humblest 
tenement.  What  a  contrast  to  the  purlieus  of  the 
Euston  Road  !  And  yet  it  is  only  ten  minutes' 
journey  away.  And  behind  it  all  rises  the  billowy 
Heath,  whose  fir-trees  stand  up  black  against  the 
autumn  sky,  or  glimmer  with  green  in  the  light 
of  spring.  There  is  perpetual  variety  on  the  Heath, 
from  its  broad  expanse  towards  Parliament  Hill 
to  its  bosky  hollows  at  North  End,  and  even  in 
its  loneliest  winter  guise,  it  "  needs  not  June  for 
beauty's  heightening."  Morning,  noon,  or  even- 
ing, whatever  the  hour  or  season,  the  quiet  places 
of  the  Heath  are  still  the  shy  haunts  of  romance, 
where,  within  a  few  minutes  of  leaving  the 
20 1 


AN  ENGLISHMAN'S  CASTLE 

crowded  and  noisy  mart,  one  can  be  free  of  the 
world  of  imagination,  and  hear  the  wind  sweep- 
ing over  open  spaces,  calling  the  heart  of  man  to 
dreams  and  to  adventures. 

Here,  too,  comes  back  to  one  something  of  the 
half-forgotten  happiness  of  boyhood.  We  who 
were  bred  by  country  pastures,  and  educated 
under  the  shadow  of  that  golden  Abbey  in  the 
West,  must  always  feel  like  pilgrims  and  sojour- 
ners  in  a  land  of  lamp-posts  and  kerb-stones. 
But  though  there  are  lamp-posts  and  kerb-stones 
now  along  the  edge  of  the  Heath,  the  heart  of  it 
is  purer  "  country  "  than  many  a  rural  wayside. 
All  the  birds  of  spring  are  hiding  in  the  birch- 
thicket,  and  there  are  silver  squirrels  among  the 
firs.  Again,  the  wraiths  of  past  lovers  of  the  place 
return  in  fancy  with  the  twilight.  Here  stands 
The  Upper  Flask,  well-loved  by  Dr.  Johnson  ; 
here  was  Constable's  cottage  ;  here  Keats  and 
Shelley  came  to  visit  Leigh  Hunt,  and  "  tired 
the  sun  with  talking,  and  sent  him  down  the 
sky."  Here,  too,  were  the  cosy  home  of  Joanna 
Baillie,  and  the  saintly  refuge  of  the  Angel  in  the 
House,  while  here  again  Du  Maurier's  St.  Ber- 
nard used  to  break  panting  through  the  bracken. 
The  dells  of  Hampstead  are  full  of  ghosts,  but 
they  are  all  ghosts  of  a  kindly  countenance. 
Friendship  is  the  essence  of  their  dream. 

Now,  if  this  book  should  fall  into  the  hands  of 
any  reader  who,  imprisoned  in  some  sunless 
back-room  in  a  crowded  quarter  of  the  town,  still 
feels  the  stirring  of  spring  in  his  blood,  as  the 
dingy  lime-tree  opposite  begins  to  break  into 
leaf,  let  him  come  to  Hampstead  and  learn  for 
himself  the  wisdom  of  making  a  home. 
202 


THE  DAY'S  WORK 


Oh,  but  I  have  done  an  unselfish  thing  in  telling 
him  this  !  For  I  know  he  will  yearn  to  be  about 
the  business  of  Balbus,  and,  as  likely  as  not,  he 
will  plant  himself  upon  the  meadow  with  the 
willows,  that  looks  so  spring-like  from  my  book- 
room  door  to-day.  Nevertheless,  one  must  not  re- 
pine. My  work  in  this  line  is  done.  Balbus  has  built 
his  wall.  It  is  a  plain  wall  enough,  and  Mr.  Voysey 
or  Mr.  Baillie  Scott  could  better  it  with  a  pencil- 
stroke  ;  but  at  least  it  encloses  a  hearth  of  homely 
comfort,  a  hearth  that  cherishes  green  thoughts 
by  a  green  shade.  I  look  out  on  my  little  garden 
plot,  where  the  sundial,  that  once  was  Emma 
Hamilton's,  is  marking  the  flitting  hours  of  my 
passing  day. 


"  Amyddst  ye  flowers, 
I  tell  ye  houres," 


it  says.  Alas  !  only  a  few  of  our  hours  may  pass 
among  the  blossoms,  and  the  sundial  cannot 
mark  them  all.  There  are  cloud  and  rain  to  come, 
as  there  have  been  cloud  and  rain  before.  But 
Balbus  has  built  his  wall.  The  days  are  gone  by, 
when  he  could  proceed  to  his  next  duty,  by  taking 
his  long-bow,  and  going  forth  to  shoot  a  deer 
upon  the  Heath.  Instead — he  has  written  this 
article.  It  will  provide  the  evening  meal.  And 
now  Balbus  shall  go  out  into  the  sunlight,  and 
mow  the  grass  around  the  dial. 


EXPLICIT 


INDEX  OF  NAMES 


Ainslie,  Noel,  172 
Ainsworth,     William      Harri- 
son, 96 

Anne,  Queen,  192 
Arber,  Edward,  120 
Archer,  William,  154 
Aristotle,  2,  7 

Arnold,  Matthew,  i,  5,  28,  51, 
.  53.  54-6o»  174 
Arthur,  King  of  Britain,  195 
Austen,  Jane,  94,  97 

Baillie,  Joanna,  202 
Baillie-Scott,  M.  H.,  203 
Balzac,  Honore  de,  97,  99 
Barnes,  William,  36 
Bedivere,  196 
Beerbohm,  Max,  27 
Binyon,  Laurence,  85 
Bjornson,  Bjornsterne,  101 
Bladud,  Prince,  191 
Bridges,  Robert,  79,  84,  85 
Bronte,  Charlotte,  98 
Bronte,  Emily,  98 
Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett, 

25,  64-66,  152 
Browning,  Robert,  25,  38,  43, 

45,  48,  49,  60,  62,  160,  177 
Bryce,  Viscount,  185 
Buchanan,  Robert,  154-160 
Burne-Jones,  Sir  Edward,  185 
Byron,  George  Gordon,  Lord, 

70,  77.  95 

Caird,  Edward,  185 
Calverley,  C.  S.,  in 
Carew,  Thomas,  122 
Charles  II.,  192 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  6,  104 
dough,    Arthur     Hugh,     51, 

53-6° 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  37, 
66,  122 


Collins,  William,  122 
Constable,  John,  202 
Cook,  Sir  Robert,  138 
Couch,  Sir  Arthur  Quiller,  116 
Courthope,  W.  J.,  62 
Crabbe,  George,  38 
Craik,  Dinah  Mulock,  98 
Crashaw,  Richard,  122,125-129 

Dacre,  Charlotte,  94 
D'Annunzio,  Gabriele,  102 
Danvers,      Jane       (wife      of 

George  Herbert),  138 
Darwin,  Charles,  41 
Defoe,  Daniel,  93 
Dickens,  Charles,  96,  98,  146, 

165,  167,  172 
Disraeli,  Benjamin,  95 
Dobell,  Sydney,  65,  69 
Dobson,    Austin,    78,    79, 

(quoted)  194 
Donne,  John,  133 
Dowden,  Edward,  44 
Drayton,  Michael,  122 
Drummond,  William,  122 
Dryden,  John,  122 
Dumas,  Alexandre,  96 
Du  Maurier,  George,  202 

Eliot,  George,  99 

Ferrar,  Nicholas,  132,  142 
Fielding,  Henry,  94,  98,  158 
Flaubert,  Gustave,  99 
Froude,  Hurrell,  52 

Gaskell,  Elizabeth  Cleg-horn, 

98 

Gissing,  George,  161-182 
Gosse,   Edmund,  78,  79,   it8 

(quoted)  188 
Gray,  David,  155 
Gray,  Thomas,  i,  118,  119,  122 


205 


INDEX  OF   NAMES 


Green,  T.  H.,  185  Melville,  Andrew,  134 

Grosart,  A.  B.,  136,  137  Meredith,  George,  100 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  38,  41 

Hamilton,  Emma,  203  Milton,  John,  118,  122,  127 

Hardy,  Thomas,  100  Moore,  Thomas,  38,  115 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  99         Morris, William,  73,  74,  77,  185 
Hemans,  Felicia,  115  Musgrave,  Agnes,  94 

Henley,  William  Ernest,  90      Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  78 
Herbert,  Edward,  134 

Herbert,  George,  130-143,  153  Nash,  Beau,  193 
Herodotus,  9  Nash,  Thomas,  93 

Herrick,  Robert,  104,  122          Nesbit,  E.,  105 
Hill,  George  Birkbeck,  183-188  Newman,  John  Henry,  52,  126 
Hogarth,  William,  13,  21  Newport,  Magdalen  (George 

Hunt,  Leigh,  202  Herbert's  Mother),  133 

Noyes,  Alfred,  90 
Ireland,  Richard,  134 

O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  78 
James  I.,  135 

Jerrold,  Douglas,  97  Palgrave,     Francis     Turner, 

Johnson,  Samuel,  185,  202  117,  120 

Jones,  Ebenezer,  68,  69  Patmore,  Coventry,  43,  46-48, 

Jones,  Ernest,  68,  69  72 

Joseph  of  Arimathea.  195  Pembroke,  William,  Earl  of,  135 

Juvenal,  10  Phillips,  Stephen,  90 

Pope,  Alexander,  127 

Keats,  John,  202  Pusey,  Edward  Bouverie,  52 

Keble,  John,  42 

Kingsley,  Charles,  36,  144-148  Radcliffe,  Ann,  94 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  86-89,  101,  Reade,  Charles,  98 

112,  145,  161  Rhoades,  James  (quoted)  29 

Knox,  John,  130  Richardson,  Samuel,  93,  158 

Rogers,  Samuel,  37 

Lang,  Andrew,  78,  79  Rossetti(  Christina,  42,  149-153 

Laud,  William,  125  Rossetti,    Dante  Gabriel,  74- 

Lever,  Charles,  97  76,  149,  159 

Lover,  Samuel,  97  Ruskin,  John,  112 

Lytton,  Bulwer,  95 

Sand,  George,  97 

MacColl,  D.  S.  (quoted)  122      Savage,  Richard,  155 
Macaulay,    Thomas    Babing-  Scott,  Sir  Walter,  38,  94,  95 

ton,  41  Shakespeare,  William,  6,   10, 

Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  93  12,  122 

Masefield,  John,  89  Shelley,  Percy Bysshe,  122,202 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  96          Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  10 
Maupassant,  Guy  de,  101  Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  93 

Maurice,    Frederick  Denison,  Smith,  Alexander,  67,  68 
36  Smollett,  Tobias,  94 

206 


INDEX  OF  NAMES 


Spenser,  Edmund,  122  Vaughan,  Henry,  122,  153 

Southey,  Robert,  38  Voysey,  C.  F.  A.,  203 

Stendahl  (Henri  Beyle),  97 
Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  Walton,  Isaak,  132,  135 

17-20,  72,  76,  77,  185  Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry,  100 

Ward,  W.  G.,  52 

Taine,  Hippolyte  Adoiphe,  96  Warren,  Samuel,  97 
Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  36  Watson,  William,  85 

Temyson,   Alfred    Lord,   29,  Wesley,  John,  126 

33»  SS,  43-45.  48»  55»  ^  62»  Wood,  Anthony  i,  133 

70,  71,  80,  1 06,  172  Wordsworth,  William,  37,  63, 

Thackeray,    William     Make-       ,  IO    ]22 

peace,  98 
Thompson,  Francis,  127 

Thomson,  James  (B.V.),  65,  ieats' ^ham  Butler,  83 
gg  '   Young,  Edward,  127 

Tolstoi',  Count  Lyof,  5,  101 

Trollope,  Anthony,  99  Zola,  Emile,  101,  175 

Turgenev,  Ivan,  101 


207 


A     001  124289     8 


mm 


